When it comes to sci-fi romance, I’ve read some weird stuff–from aliens who give great oral to gothic horror set inside the guts of a living spaceship. But I honestly never thought I’d pick up a sentient object romance until I read the blurb for Volatile Memory.
Yes, the FMC falls in love with a haunted mask.
Yes, it is super weird.
And yes, I absolutely loved it!
The Story
In a spacefaring future controlled by dystopian corporate empires, people wear AI animal masks that give them the traits and powers of predators and prey. As a trans woman in this conformist society, Wylla is forced to live on the fringe scavenging wrecked tech. When she answers an unusual distress call, she finds a murder victim wearing a one-of-a-kind mask that could finally be the payout that will free her from life in the margins.
But when Wylla puts on the mask, everything changes. She finds that the object is haunted by the mind of the murdered woman, Sable. If Wylla sells the mask, she will be dooming Sable to erasure. Worse, the mask is part of an evil corporate plot that was abandoned in beta testing, and the corporation will stop at nothing to get the evidence back.
Wylla and Sable connect over the shared experience of being outcasts in a conformist culture, and instead of selling the mask or running, Wylla embarks on an action-packed journey to unravel the mystery of Sable’s murder and get revenge on her killer.
What I liked
Volatile Memory combines the emotional depth and lyrical writing style of This Is How You Lose the Time War with the fast-paced sci-fi action of The Murderbot Diaries. If you know my reading tastes, you know that’s a huge compliment–Time War and Murderbot are two of my fave sci-fi stories of all time.
I adore a love story with flawed characters and emotional depth, and Volatile Memory is overflowing with both, especially when you consider how much it packs into a novella-length page count.
Part of how it achieves this depth is the unusual choice of second person POV: the entire story is told by Sable to Willa using direct address, so that as a reader you feel as if you’re in Willa’s shoes, hearing your own strange love story told to you from the mouth of your lover.
This unusual stylistic choice adds emotional depth to the action scenes because as a reader you feel Sable’s concern for Wylla intimately as Wylla fights for her life.
What I Loved
I love it when an author successfully uses a fun and quirky sci-fi concept to explore something deeper, and that’s exactly what Haddon does with the premise of the mask. Wylla’s and Sable’s interaction with the mask is an exploration of the characters’ relationships with their own bodies, the roles their bodies have forced them to play in the context of their society, and their shared pursuit of the autonomy to change those roles.
I haven’t spent much time thinking about what gender dysphoria or being transgender might feel like, so I love that this book broadened my perspective in a way that will hopefully expand my understanding and empathy.
A Caveat About The Romance
I called this a sentient object romance, but I was mostly joking.
Yes, Wylla falls for a mask. But if you’re picturing the NSFW imagery from the latest showerhead romp, you’ve got the wrong idea. Volatile Memory is a no-spice love story focused on emotional and intellectual connection.
It’s more like This is How You Lose the Time War or A Memory Called Empire than it is like Forked.
If you’re looking for an unusual love story, this book is for you. But if you’re looking for five peppers, it’s not your read.
Trigger Warning
I also want to mention that while Volatile Memory contains a typical amount of sci-fi violence, it’s described in a slightly gorier-than-average way. There’s brain gunk getting on peoples’ shoes, there’s a scene where a dead guy’s eyeballs are boiled into the eye sockets of the mask, etc.
As you might expect with a revenge story, the characters are morally grey and very angry. But this novella has a slightly darker tone than some other sci-fi action novels because there’s not much in the way of humour to offset the dystopian elements.
If you’re super queasy when it comes to gore or if you find you need comedic relief to offset the darkness in your sci-fi dystopia, this book may not be for you.
Overall Thoughts
Volatile Memory is weird in a way that works. This novella takes the quirky concept of AI masks and uses it to dive into a deep and intriguing exploration of gender, identity, and the characters’ relationships with their own bodies.
I don’t rec this one to readers looking for fluffy, escapist romance, but I highly recommend this novella to readers who can stand a little darkness and are still chasing the high from This Is How You Lose the Time War. You may also like it if you enjoyed the exploration of memory after death in A Memory Called Empire, and the fast-paced action of The Murderbot Diaries.
Personally, I loved this read and I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel, just not at a moment when I’m looking for a fluffy escape.
Have you read Volatile Memory? Would you consider it a sentient object romance? Let me know what you thought. I love hearing from readers in the comments!
