When The Lesbrary received an ARC of This World is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa, I had to pick it up. This science fiction novella, which came out September 10, 2024, takes place on a colony world far in the future and involves space corporation politics, a planet with an unusual ecosystem that probably should not have been colonized, and a toxic polycule. Ashing-Giwa packed a lot of world-building and character choices into this novella, and I had a great time reading it. We are living in something of a novella-renaissance right now, and This World is Not Yours stakes out its place with panache, tension, and a whole lot of drama.
In the colony of New Belaforme, married couple Amara and Vinh hope they can start a new life together away from Amara's politically-dominant family, despite several familial attempts to get Vinh out of the picture. But colony politics are not any less dangerous, when an attack by a rival colony on the same planet puts their endeavor on the knife-edge of failure. Complicating matters is The Gray-the planet's poorly understood guardian organism-an amorphous blobby-ooze that consumes anything that is a threat to the planet's ecosystem. What or how it decides what is a threat is something that the colonists are desperately trying to figure out.
The descriptive copy for this book promised me a toxic polycule, and this polycule was indeed lethal, if not exactly a polycule, given that none of them actually signed up to be in one. Main characters Amara and Vinh may have fled to a colony in order to consummate their love without family politics, but it seems like they never learned any actual communication skills in the first blush of their passion. As long as they can both do their jobs and be married, they click along, but the tensions bubble under the surface like a geyser about to spew forth at any second. And when colony circumstances force the ruling council to declare their marriage null and that they need to both marry men-for the good of the colony-instead of talking about anything or working out a plan to technically follow the council's orders but arrange matters to their satisfaction, they continue to refuse to talk about anything. Amara ends up married to their long-time friend Jesse, who had followed them to the colony, and Vinh to a random man, who honestly seems nice in an extremely bland way, and no one is happy. What was delicious, to me, about this setup was that there were several ways they could have comported themselves, if they had sat down to talk things through, that could have made all or most them at least reasonably content (and if you sign up for an isolated colony mission, sometimes you have to make the best with what you have), but it simply did not happen as characters refused to talk or actively decided to make things worse. Once I accepted that this was not a love story but a drama, I had a ton of fun with their terrible choices.
The world-building of this story really shines for a novella. The brief glimpses of larger corporate politics, and the bleak situations of colony worlds in this universe were fascinating. I especially loved the implications of competing colonies on the same planet. The planet itself is fascinating. The Gray's relationship with the planet and how smart it is are interesting and add the horror of inevitability to this novella. You can't negotiate with formless, killer goo if it decides you've got to go. Keeping on its good side is top priority. The world-building was so good, actually, that I thought this could have been a full-length book rather than a novella. I would have loved to see the planet more fleshed out, and it would have given more scope for the character drama. But as a novella, it was self contained and had a complete arc.
Overall, I had a great time with this novella. I'm definitely going to read Kemi Ashing-Giwa's other work. If you are looking for some good short science-fiction, or a break from romance, or a planet that can reject colonialism by itself, This World is Not Yours is a must for your to-read list to kick off the fall.