Regeneration by Julie Czerneda, and GIVE AWAY of Species Imperative Omnibus!

Posted by: Redhead on: November 24, 2014

• In: give away | Julie Czerneda
• 34 Comments

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Thanks to Julie Czerneda’s publishers, I’ve got a copy of the Species Imperative Omnibus to give away to one lucky reader!  Scroll to the bottom of this post for more information on the give away.

Regeneration (Species Imperative #3) by Julie Czerneda

published in 2006

where I got it: purchased used

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It’s hard to get into the plot of Regeneration without spoiling things that happened in the previous books, so I’m going to try to keep  the plot-talk very light. The super quick oversimplified plot introduction is that in the not too distant future we have become part of the Interspecies Union, which is exactly what it sounds like. Thanks to no-space transit technology provided by the multi-dimensional Ro, and the Sinzi who administrate it, hundreds of galactic species can travel all over the place.    Brymn, a Dhryn researcher, seeks out the Earthbound salmon researcher Dr. Mackenzie Connor (Mac to her friends), for help with how to save his species.

 

In Regeneration, the final book of the Species Imperative trilogy, while most governments are trying to figure out a weapon of mass destruction (or extinction) that can be used against the Dhryn, Mac and her team are asking questions that are more along the lines of *why*?  Why do the Dhryn have this biological urge? What is their biology anyways? Have they always been like this? How and where did they evolve? Can we trust our sources of information? I wish all scifi books had this much science in their fiction.  Give this series to a high school kid, and watch them fall in love with biology.

 

Underneath the superb characters and the smart dialog, and the hella fun aliens (whose biology makes sense!), and the political intrigue and the race against time are some heavy questions:

 

How do we handle an invasive species, especially if that species is intelligent and space-faring?

 

How do you study a species that most people (human and alien) have been taught to shoot on sight?

 

How do you get a panicked population to calm down? How do you get someone to work against their biological urges (or what they’ve been lead to believe are their biological urges?)

and in the slight less heavy but still crazy important column: How do you question everything you know?  How do you study something that is invisible?  How do you get people to believe you when all you’ve got is a really good hunch?

 

Answering those questions would be a major spoiler, so I’ll give you these vague answers instead:

 

We do finally get an explanation as to why Brymn sought out Dr. Connor specifically – why he wanted a marine biologist who studies populations, as opposed to an entomologist, or someone who specializes in primate studies.  When we first met Brymn at the very beginning of the series, we knew exactly what question he was asking, and we assumed we knew why.  But there’s this absolutely brilliant inside out flip Czerneda does with his questions, and this flip only makes them more important and more relevant. And even better, I didn’t see it coming, because like many of the characters, I was looking at things from a very narrow, and very human viewpoint.

 

While reading the books in the Species Imperative series, I never felt like they were super dense. I never had to read a passage over again to figure out what was going on. They aren’t dense in the classic sense, but boy is there a lot of information and detail jammed into these books! And that level of detail? I loved it.  “Level of detail” is a razor’s edge, how much is too much? how much is too little?  How do you give the reader a ton of information in a compelling fashion, get them to notice the subtleties,  and still get the reader to want more? Read this series and you’ll learn all the tricks.  Mac is the main character, but the cast of supporting characters is massive. People she knows at the research base, EarthGov people she meets, aliens she meets and works with.  This is not a sparsely populated story, and everyone is developed to some extent. (You’ll meet Charles Mudge III in the first novel. Keep an eye on him. because reasons)  Although told in third person, Czerneda presents nearly every character via their relationship with Mac. Does she enjoy working with them? Is she curious about them? Do they drive her up a wall? Do they assume she knows more than she really does, or that she knows absolutely nothing?  It was a smart way to introduce a huge cast, and to do it a way that makes every character memorable.

 

On that topic, I’m going to share with you my favorite thing about Mac, something she does that she probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing (here’s that subtlety again).  Mac is a very expressive person, she wears her emotions on her sleeve.  You know if she’s happy to see you, or stifling a laugh, or pissed as hell the moment she walks into a room.  She has not got much of a poker face.  And because she is very expressive, she notices everyone’s else’s facial expressions and body language as well.  This gets fascinating and actually pretty important when she’s working alongside aliens. Does that head shake mean amusement? Are those skin folds changing color? Does that lazy eye mean what she thinks it means? Is that style of dress indicative of something else? It gives a whole different level of characterization to the aliens we spend the most time with – Fourteen, Anchen, and then later a Dhryn.  Other humans probably think Mac’s got some special empathic gift. Nope, she just knows how to pay attention, like any good scientist.

 

I think my favorite book in the series is the first one, Survival, probably because I’m more a fan of being faced with huge questions (rather than taking the time to answer them). The second book, Migration, has a lot of humor, and lots of entertaining misunderstandings with aliens, and Regeneration is full of intrigue, reunions, unsure futures, alien body language, and questions with no easy answers. The entire series is brilliantly intelligent, accessible, entertaining, and damn enjoyable reading.

 

Give Away Details:

Thanks to Julie Czerneda’s publisher, I’ve got a copy of the Species Imperative Omnibus to give away to one lucky reader!  This give away is open to residents of Canada and the US.  To enter, just leave a comment below saying you’re interested, and leave me some way to reach you (e-mail, twitter, facebook, whatever).  This give away will close at Midnight, Eastern Time, on Monday Dec 1st.   Good luck!

Tags: aliens, biology, give away, science fiction