Diverse Similarity by Sharon Rose – Book Review

Transcript

G’day humans. Today I’m talking about the science fiction novel Diverse Similarity by Sharon Rose.

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of the Stars. And if you love to geek out over science fiction and fantasy, be sure to click the subscribe button and bell.

Diverse Similarity is a book that delves deeply into the culture and differences between various alien races.

The protagonist is Kena, the only human serving in a multi-racial crew on the Starship Ontrevay. Their mission is primarily scientific exploration in nature, which gave me some of the Star Trek vibes that I crave in a sci-fi book. But this story is very much its own thing.

One of the interesting things we learn in this book is that every species has what’s called emfrel. Kind of a telepathic scent that they emanate. This emfrel can be distracting and uncomfortable to other races so if they’re going to spend any significant time with each other, they need to acclimate to each other. Humans, it turns out, are especially sensitive to emfrel, but we never knew this until we started encountering other species.

This is really interesting because it’s adds something new and unexpected about what it means to be human. Often in sci-fi, we’ll encounter other races, and those races have interesting new abilities or aspects to them. But humans usually tend to be the bland, base, species with no special abilities. This book twists that around as we find that in some ways, we are the odd ones out. We are the weird ones.

Actually, that doesn’t surprise me. We are pretty weird.

Another difference that is explored, is the makeup of what it is to be human. Most species have two aspects to them, the physical body, and what they call the sarit, which kind of encompasses the mind and the spiritual aspect. But humans are said in this story to have three components, the body, the mind and the spirit, all as distinct. And these concepts are considered real. When an unknown race doesn’t understand that humans are spiritual beings, rather than saratial beings, and treat her accordingly, it causes damage to our hero. And this is all tied into the idea of telepathy. Humans are one of the few races that can’t initiate telepathic contact.

The story, while heavily character-driven, has two main plot segments. The first deals primarily with relationships on board the ship, as they investigate a space mystery. The second is more outwardly focussed and is more suspenseful, involving dangerous natural forces and an alien race that we have a very tentative peace with.

While quite distinct, these two parts are very much linked together and form one cohesive story.

This is another book that has difficult to pronounce names, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I think maybe it’s just a personal taste thing. There is one race who have no vowels in their names at all, which is a big stumbling block to me as I read because I don’t know what to say in my head when I see one of these names. Interestingly, we learn through the story that these names do have vowel sounds in them, causing difficulty for characters in-universe, and it even explains how to pronounce then names of major characters, but this came a little late in the book for me, and honestly, I was too lazy to bother memorising them. It was, however, great worldbuilding.

The main antagonists in this book are the PitKreelaundun, another tongue twister, although there’s a lot of meaning behind that name. They remain a mystery for much of the book, but when they are explored, they’re explored with a great deal of depth. We learn some interesting things about them, their culture and their history.

The book also explores some ideas of mercy and forgiveness. This can be hard to do. When a character is portrayed as being seriously violated or wronged in some way, by an antagonist, I sometimes struggle when the character later finds forgiveness in their heart for that antagonist, even though I very much believe in forgiveness and grace. In a fictional setting, we yearn for the guilty to get what’s coming to them. In the case of diverse Similarity, it worked for me. The conflicting desire for justice, and appreciation of mercy somehow worked together. So big props to the author for that.

Sharon Rose has created a vivid rich world populated by fascinating alien races. Most of the conflict in this story comes out of genuine and logically-understandable cultural differences and misunderstandings. It makes me appreciate how hard it would really be to form a meaningful peace and friendship with an alien race, because, you’re likely coming from such different backgrounds, that everything is going to be interpreted wrongly. And sometimes, no amount of words can help alleviate those misunderstandings.

If you like alien-based science fiction that digs into the cultures and biology of the different species, then you should check out Diverse Similarity by Sharon Rose. I think you’ll really like it.

And if you like the sound of this book, you might also want to check out my review of No Road Among the Stars by A Walker Scott

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