TITLE: The Second Star
AUTHOR: Alma Alexander
432 pages, Crossroad Press, ISBN 9781951510398 (paperback)
DESCRIPTION: (from the Goodreads page): The Parada had been lost for almost two hundred years before they recovered the ship, drifting in stygian interstellar darkness, and brought her home again. But that was not the miracle. The miracle was that the crew was still alive. That was also the problem.
Six crew members went out on the Parada, Earth’s first starship. All contact was lost, and the ship vanished for almost two centuries. When the Parada’s successor found the drifting ship and somehow managed to bring it home, the six crew members were not only still alive but barely older, due to the time dilation effects of near-FTL travel. Their return was a miracle – but it could not be revealed to the waiting world. The problem was, six individuals went out to the stars. More than seventy fractured personalities came back.
Psychologist Stella Froud and Jesuit Father Philip Carter were recruited as part of the team assembled to investigate the mystery, and to try and help the Parada’s crew understand their condition and possibly reverse it. What they discovered was a deepening mystery, and very soon they found themselves forced to take sides in a conflict that nobody could have possibly predicted. Their world would never be the same again.
MY RATING: Five stars out of five
MY THOUGHTS: In her new science fiction thriller, Alma Alexander deftly weaves together several genre tropes and upends them, taking the story in an unpredictable and exciting direction.
The Second Star starts out as a standard “derelict ship found in deep space” mystery. We have the long-missing Parada found by another ship, Juno, whose crew goes above and beyond to get Parada and its crew back to Earth – where both crews are then quarantined because there are several unexpected issues with Parada’s crew: they are significantly younger than even near-light-speed travel should have allowed them to remain, and they are all suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder to an extreme degree. The mystery is: what happened to them out there to cause the fracturing of their psyches, and will the same thing happen to the crew of Juno, the only other space-farers Earth has sent out since the launch of Parada two hundred years earlier? Alexander spools out the clues but doesn’t let the reader wonder for long: roughly about a third of the way into the book, the reader (as well as main characters Stella Froud and Philip Carter) know what happened. At which point, the book smoothly transitions, for its middle third, into a medical-psychological thriller with spy-story overtones: worries over whether the Parada crew’s personalities can ever be woven together successfully enough to survive in a world they can’t recognize are complicated by Stella and Philip trying to figure out exactly what the military command in charge of the returned astronauts plans to do with them. Do the Doctor and the Priest follow orders or follow the higher call of their professions to care for their charges? Once that decision is made, the final third of the book takes a turn I don’t really want to spoil in a review. Suffice to say, the final third is not only the most exciting but also the most thought-provoking portion of the book, and well worth the build-up to get there. The great thing about the technical execution of this novel is two-fold: that it never goes where “derelict space-ship” and “medical/spy thriller” stories are expected to go, and that it transitions so smoothly between the different genres. While I was reading, I didn’t identify clear transition points. It was only after I was done that I realized the book was roughly divided into thirds that fit different standard story types.
But all the technical wizardry of mixing genres only goes so far if the story lacks engaging characters. Thankfully, the characters at the center of this story are an intriguing odd-couple. Stella is essentially an atheist, partnered with a Jesuit priest to figure out what happened to Parada’s crew and if they can be counseled into enough wellness to function in a world that has changed greatly in the two hundred years they’ve been gone. Froud and Carter become confidants, friends, and mutual support – something they sorely need in the face of a by-the-books military command that may not have the best interest of their patients at heart. Their relationship morphs from cordial professionalism to confidentiality and camaraderie organically throughout the story, including key moments where their beliefs conflict and they still find a way to work together to do what must be done.
More importantly, Parada’s crew come to trust the Doctor and The Priest, bringing us not only to the key reveal of What Happened Out There, but also forming the hinge on which the final third of the book swings. The Crew are also well-written, the various personalities of each crew member well-delineated in both dialogue and in descriptions of how the crew carry themselves. The Dissociative Identity Disorder is never played as a joke, nor as something temporary to be “cured.” The question is never “will these people ever be ‘normal’ again?” but rather “What will the new normal for these characters look like?” And because they are six individuals (although with a shared instigating trauma), the answer is different for each. There’s no single solution, no path they will all follow. Watching the Doctor and the Priest, as well as the crew, come to terms with what it means for each of them individually is heart-breaking.
When the main characters of a book are a scientist and a priest, one might expect a lot of preachiness (from both sides). Alexander largely avoids that – these characters, and a third who represents a different spiritual mindset from that of the priest, debate and discuss, but for the most part the author does not allow them to stand on soapboxes yelling. The conversations are nuanced, and the author never lets any of the viewpoints dominate. Even before the final third of the book, those conversations had me thinking.
Any mention of a “second star” brings to mind the classic line from Peter Pan (“The second star to the right, and straight on ‘til morning!”). While the story is not obliquely a “Neverland” tale, there is a connection to be made: every one of Parada’s crew have a small-child persona who form a “Children’s Collective” when the group needs to come to a consensus of some kind. They are a mixed- and non-gendered group “ages” six to eight who at once are the most organized and yet the most lost of the personalities. It’s a small nod to Pan, and not the only classic piece of literature the title is a nod to, but I noticed it and think it was intentional.
Readers who enjoy books that blend genres and books that unsettle and make one think should seek out The Second Star, which came out at the start of July.