Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water

Starred review from March 18, 2019
A treacherous climb through the caves of a prison planet kicks off this deeply moving novella from Nebula winner Kaftan. Bee is unable to recall the crimes of her past; all she knows is the darkness of Colel-Cab’s oppressive caves, where she relies on fellow prisoner Chela for company. Chela tells Bee that they’re telepaths responsible for the murder of an entire starship’s population, and that they deserve the fate that they have been given—but as the faint voice of another telepath reaches them from beyond the caves, Bee learns about and faces the truth of her imprisonment and her relationship with Chela. Acting as both a cerebral thriller and an earnest take on the weight of emotional trauma, the story shows unmatched depth. Kaftan evokes sincere empathy for Bee, who wrestles with guilt, power, love, and determination, but never sacrifices tension or disturbing twists. This invigorating, cleverly introspective novella is the perfect length for its plot and themes, and its ghost will linger in the reader’s memory.

April 1, 2019
A woman struggles for survival and her sense of self in this hallucinatory novella. Bee and her companion/lover, Chela, are imprisoned in a cave system on the distant world of Colel-Cab, spending their days in a challenging and miserable struggle to reach each supply drop before the local bug population destroys the goods they need to survive. The chip used to inhibit Bee and Chela's telepathy has also apparently damaged Bee's memory, and she remembers nothing about the crime she supposedly committed and little about her life before her imprisonment. Then Bee makes contact with someone outside the prison, bringing back memories of Bee's beloved wife, Jasmine, inspiring the hope for escape, and casting doubt on both Chela's identity and her true motivations. A person lost in a mental or virtual construct is a sci-fi plot element so common as to be pedestrian, and the worldbuilding is the merest sketch. All we know is that this is a near future where telepaths exist and are despised. This could be a small piece of a greater whole--the first few chapters of a novel of the great telepathic rebellion--but by itself, this story doesn't add up to very much. The focus is on Bee's journey of self-discovery as well as the relationship between Bee and Jasmine, but we don't learn enough about Bee or Jasmine to get more than mildly invested in them. We know they're in love, because the characters tell us they are. One is presumably meant to find some poetry or profundity in Bee's mental landscape, but it's not terribly substantial or even that interesting. At most, there's a decent exploration of whether infidelity is possible when one spouse has amnesia and can't even remember the wife she swore fidelity to. Not enough there, there.

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