Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon

TL;DR: This one didn’t quite land for me, but there were some great ideas here.
Source: NetGalley , Thank you so much to the publisher!

Plot: A scavenger finds a mask that will change her life, but it’s messy in so many ways.
Characters: We get a pretty one sided view of characters, and the fawning that our PoV makes over characters does it make it hard to get much as far as an accurate read.
Setting: As we spend most the time on the run this novella wasn’t super heavy on setting.
Mystery: There was little mystery here and little as far as tension. The small conivnences really paved the way on this one.

Summary:

With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the call goes out that a lucrative piece of tech is waiting on a nearby planet, she relies on all the swiftness of her prey animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.

What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized, and I was alive.

Masks aren’t supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.

Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.

Thoughts:

I was so very excited for this. I really was, but ultimately this missed the mark for me in a big way. Volatile Memory is about a woman who sets out after a Mask – a type of high grade equipment that almost everyone uses. This mask is new, unknown, and possibly worth a lifetime of money but things go haywire.

I had two main issues here. The first is that this is incredibly bleak and the characters are so beat down. The story is about rage and revenge, so I can see why but instead of feeling invigorated or cheering for the characters all that came across was… depression. My second issue was that for such a powerful tool the two went after what felt like such a small fry in the bigger picture. There was so much the Mask could do with it’s power but they went to after a small, sad man.

This just didn’t work for me. Could this have worked as a longer novel? Perhaps? But ultimately it is what it is and there will be other revenge stories I can try. Give this one a shot if you don’t mind the bleak and angry with very little hope or joy. Otherwise it might be a skip.