Book Review | The Rosetta Mind (Rosetta 2) #booksky

The Rosetta Mind by Claire McCague is the follow-up to the marvellous Rosetta Man. I enjoyed that so much that I added this to my reading list as soon as I heard of it. Then it came out, I bought it, and started to see some fairly disappointing comments. So I left it for a while. Three years, in fact. I wish I’d ignored them. I adored it! There’s a third book to come.

The Rosetta Mind (Rosetta series #2)

by Claire McCague

Estlin Hume was living off-grid on 12 acres outside of Twin Butte, Alberta when he got snagged into being translator for first contact. Home again, he wakes to find himself surrounded by aliens, affectionate squirrels, government representatives, and military personnel. That’s nothing new. But he hadn’t planned on hosting one thousand three hundred and sixty-one cuttlefish in a massive saltwater tank suspended above his house!

Stuck at the center of the alien contact crisis, Estlin is challenged by ill-advised directives from government officials, trenchant military interference, and random acts of violence from unknown nefarious agents—all of whom are determined to find out for themselves what the aliens really want. No matter the cost! No matter the outcome! [goodreads]

My Review

The reviews of the Rosetta Mind I saw suggested that the first few chapters were slow, or heavy, or wading in mud, or similar. I don’t know why–I raced through them. Perhaps people wanted something more than alien species interacting with cuttlefish in a tank suspended above Estlin’s house, for no apparent reason? Perhaps they prefer their scifi with spaceships zapping each other? That way you can work out pretty quickly who the good guys are.

Claire McCague appeals more to the person who likes their science fiction to be complex, multidisciplinary, with a good helping of humour. That would be me, then. I loved the complexity of it, and it is very complex. Some of the specialists brought in to help Estlin work out what the aliens, or, now, the cuttlefish, are communicating to him, speak in mathematical terms of a nature far beyond my understanding. And like some of Juliana Rew‘s writing, I find it best to go with the flow, accept the concepts if they slide in the back of my head while my eyes are reading the words, and enjoy the ride. The protagonists end up having to draw the shapes and colours of the conversations they are having, because there are no words, only ideas and concepts. And, as it turns out, the aliens and the cuttlefish are both very concerned about the ideas that humans have.

Meanwhile, the humans (i.e. the military and governments etc) worry about what power sources the aliens have. How can they can snag them before their enemies do? Which leads to a really, really interesting plot twist. Attentive readers with a little meteorology, seismology and similar background, will probably get there before I did. I probably got there on the second or third application of the clue. I expect a few readers will be surprised. But I’m sure they’ll enjoy it.

If you like your aliens to do different things from humans, to think differently, have other ethics, and work with alternative applications of physics, you’ll love this. If not, well, give it a try, you may change your mind.