Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot
Published by Angry Robot
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Bisexual Authors, Disabled and Neurodivergent Authors, Latinx Authors, LGBTQIA+ Authors, Lesbian Characters, OwnVoices Representation, Sapphic Characters, Librarian Characters, Outlaw Characters, Spycraft, Medical Scenes, Physical Disabilities, Trauma, LGBTQIA+ Romance, Sci Fi Action, Sci Fi Adventure, Space, Space Ship
My Rating:
Published on: 8th February 2022
Pages: 444
Disability Representation: Amputee, Forced Surgery, Missing Limb, Prosthetic Arm, Trauma
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Three factions vie for control of the galaxy. Rig, a gunslinging, thieving, rebel with a cause, doesn’t give a damn about them and she hasn’t looked back since abandoning her faction three years ago. 
 
That is, until her former faction sends her a message: return what she stole from them, or they’ll kill her twin sister.
 
Rig embarks on a journey across the galaxy to save her sister – but for once she’s not alone. She has help from her network of resistance contacts, her taser-wielding librarian girlfriend, and a mysterious bounty hunter.
 
If Rig fails and her former faction finds what she stole from them, trillions of lives will be lost--including her sister's. But if she succeeds, she might just pull the whole damn faction system down around their ears. Either way, she’s going to do it with panache and pizzazz.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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Bluebird was a lovely book with engaging characters that I grew to love over the course of the book, and that is sort of the problem. The universe Rig lives in is anything but lovely. This book should have left me with some warm fuzzy feelings (I’m not a complete pessimist), just not quite so many. Bluebird is an adult fiction novel that reads to me like a young adult novel; I’ve read some young adult novels that are darker and more cynical than this book. Which would be fine if this were a space opera like Star Wars, where the heroes fight the big bad and save the day. The issue is that Bluebird is aiming for much higher resonance, and while it accurately hits some targets, in terms of overall plot, I found it a bit lacking.

The issue for me was the predictability. That is what made it feel like it was written for a much younger audience. In a universe that is filled with atrocities, the protagonist meets an awful lot of nice people who don’t stab her in the back and help her and her bounty hunter friend on their merry way. It’s not quite that simple, and yet in a way it is. When an issue does crop up, it was something that was telegraphed from miles away, highlighted in neon colours, and underlined so many times that you couldn’t miss it.

For those wanting a light, fun read, that’s absolutely fine, and if you’re just wanting a novel that takes “Lesbian gunslinger fights spies in space!” to heart, then this is the book for you. However, Pierlot is also using science fiction to engage with the topic of colonialism, something she does skilfully. Rig is not just on the run from her faction; she’s a reclaimer, and she has been successfully hunting down Kashrini artefacts that have been stolen by the factions.

I realised while writing this review that the issue for me was not Pierlot’s choice to write a pulp science fiction novel and infuse it with “serious topics”. That is what science fiction has been doing since the dawn of the genre, after all. Again, it comes back to the predictable scenarios, and I think I’m a tad annoyed with Pierlot in a way. On the one hand, she has created this deep and fascinating universe, the perfect landscape for discussing colonialism and claiming from cultures, and by doing so, shown great skill as a writer. In comparison, the overarching storyline of Bluebird seems sloppy. It feels like it is trying to appeal to the market; it aims to sell copies rather than get to the root of the story by making it an easier read and holding the reader’s hand at every turn.

I also felt a bit let down by the lesbian relationship in Bluebird. A kickass librarian character? I was completely ready to love June, and then there was this horrible moment where it became extremely obvious that her love for Rig would only ever go so far. Even when her logical argument was proved to be completely wrong, she still stood by it. As someone who is an emotional abuse survivor, reading about a relationship where one person has to find excuses not to be with the other and then painfully watch as their partner convinces them that it’s ok, is not fun. I don’t want to read that. I don’t want that to be considered the norm to aim for in a relationship. Even when someone points out to Rig that this isn’t right, it’s smothered, ignored and never readdressed. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen with an LGBTQA+ couple in a novel, and it’s not realistic; it’s just depressing.

As a result, Bluebird‘s great premise becomes a mediocre science fiction novel, which, personally, I’ll remember as being a fun read, and that was it. This is Pierlot’s debut novel, so I’d be interested in seeing how her style progresses in the future. She does have a gaming background, which may explain the reader-hand-holding aspect of her writing, which, as a fellow gamer, I can recognise its origins. Useful for a career in game writing, not so much in novel writing.

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