Book Review: ‘Volatile Memory’ by Seth Haddon
In Volatile Memory, Seth Haddon gives us a love story that questions everything about love. Wylla is a trans woman in a society that doesn’t accept her. She isn’t even sure she can love herself, let alone anyone else. Then she meets Sable. Sable is a lesbian in a society that doesn’t value her either. The two find each other, and sparks fly. They decide that together they can take on the world, freeing them both. There’s just one problem: a huge corporation is hunting them down for some experimental tech they stole. Oh, yeah, and Sable is technically dead; that’s a problem too. But they say love conquers all. Time to prove it love!
[Note: While I am reviewing this novel independently and honestly, it should be noted that it has been provided to me by Tor for the purpose of this review. Warning: My review of Volatile Memory contains some spoilers!]
Volatile Memory is a high-intensity love story
Volatile Memory opens with Wylla receiving a transmission that promises a huge pay-off to whoever can come and find the sender first. Wylla needs a good score, so she races off to find the sender. But she isn’t the only one who received the transmission. So did every other scavenger within range, and they are all looking for a huge payday. By some miracle, Wylla makes manages to get the tech first and get away. But that’s just the start of this adrenaline-fueled love story.
The tech that Wylla found is a mask. In her world almost everyone wears a mask as they go about their lives. These masks come in different models that do everything from connecting to the network to enhancing senses to controlling physiology through neural stimulation. The mask that Wylla now has is a new experimental model called the HAWK. But something is wrong with it. When Wylla touches it she can communicate with the woman who was wearing it when she found it. The dead woman. Somehow Sable’s brain seems to have been uploaded to the Hawk. Neither Wylla nor Sable is 100 percent sure what is happening; nothing like this has ever happened before, but they embrace it.
The more the two work together, the more their feelings for each other develop. As crazy as it sounds, the two come to love each other. But with the powerful people coming after them it seems impossible that they can be together (not to mention the whole Sable being dead thing). But in a future where anything is possible and with the power of love on their side, anything is possible. Even overthrowing an evil corporation and finding forbidden love.
Volatile Memory asks just what is a person
There is currently a lot of debate right now about gender and who makes a person a man or a woman (although people do seem to be much more concerned about what makes a woman a woman). Sadly, Haddon doesn’t see us making much progress on this front. In his world we’ve managed to explore countless worlds, build ships that move fast enough to make travel between them possible, and create technology that allows us to augment our own bodies in ways that are unthinkable now.
And yet, even in a society that uses technology to entirely change the human body’s abilities (merging humans with animals, which is much weirder if you ask me) it’s still not acceptable to change genders. It is sad to me that a society that can change everything else about the human body would still insist on the plumbing staying the same. Wylla is brave enough to buck society’s rules about gender, but it leaves her in a terrible position, constantly on the outside and in danger. And even though she’s decided to live as Wylla, she hasn’t exactly accepted herself yet, constantly wondering if what she’s done is right and being happier the way she is, but not exactly happy either.
Besides thinking about gender and just what makes someone one or the other (or both or neither), Haddon questions what exactly makes us human. Sable was a living human at one point. But she is definitely very dead when Wylla finds her. Or at least her body is. But her consciousness lives on in the mask. Does that make her still alive? Dead? Something else? If her mind is transferred to an android, does that make her more alive than being thoughts in a mask?
When Wylla and Sable learn more about the mask Sable is trapped in, the possibility that she’s just an AI copying Sable is pondered. So then we have to ask if AI counts as being alive. What if AI makes it to the point of being sentient? Then is it alive? These are difficult questions that society is going to have to face in the future if we continue down our current technological road and I’m not sure yet what the answers are, I don’t think anyone is, but we will have to find answers, but like Wylla and Sable do.
Volatile Memory also asks just what love is
Beyond figuring out just what a person is (which Haddon only looks to solve for Wylla and Sable, not the whole world), Volatile Memory asks just what love is. Can we love someone if we can never touch them? Is it their body, their smile, their eyes that we love? Or is it their mind, their sense of humor, or their personality that we fall for? Is it some combination of both? Sable struggles with this more than Wylla. She feels certain that if they can’t have a physical relationship then they can’t truly love each other. And perhaps because her body has always felt foreign to her, Wylla struggles with the need for physical love in the relationship much less.
When I was reading Volatile Memory, I thought that their relationship was very similar to an online relationship. People form very strong connections to others online, falling very deeply in love, all without ever seeing the other person in real life. Wylla and Sable have a similar situation going on. Right down to not being totally sure that the other person is even real (in Wylla’s case). If we consider online relationships real, then Wylla and Sable should be given the same consideration. Their love is no less real. And while their story might be a little messier, their love is no less real.
My rating for this book: 7/10
Many people like to have a love story to read in the summer. Something steamy to read by the pool and be inspired by. Volatile Memory isn’t a traditional love story. There’s no hot secret millionaire, no whirl-wind trip through Europe, and no home-town boy made good to tempt the heroine when she returns to lick her wounds. But there is love and acceptance and adventure. Those are the best ingredients for a good love story.
Some of the concepts might be a little heavy for pool reading, but just bring an extra floatie and you’ll be fine. Volatile Memory is releasing on July 22nd. Consider picking it up to expand your mind and your heart this summer.
Also check out: Book Review: The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton
