Zeb Larson reviews Roche Limit: Monadic #4…
This final issue of ROCHE LIMIT brings the acclaimed, existential, mind-bending saga to a close. But not before some crazy sh*t goes down! Can humanity be saved and the Black Sun stopped once and for all?
Well, we’ve finally come to the end of Roche Limit. This has been one of my favorite series, in no small part because it’s been trying to tackle high-concept fiction in a way that most other sci-fi series have eschewed for years now. Moreci and his collaborators have been trying to break away from the destructive trope of science fiction as action film, though it must be said that this series hasn’t shied away from katana fights and gunplay when it serves the story. If 2001: A Space Odyssey met Aliens and Blade Runner, it would be Roche Limit. So it’s with a bit of sadness that I finally have to say goodbye to this series.
Without giving anything major away about the issue, the big blowout we’ve been hoping for finally happens in this issue. Sonya and Bekkah throw down with Moscow while Sasha finalizes her own plan to destroy the Anomaly. That’s all I want to say. Anything else would just end up spoiling the best parts.
I never really gave the series enough credit for weaving action and cerebral narration together. Perhaps that was because it was relatively seamless, and all of the action pieces were that right balance between gritty realism and ass-kickery (helped in no small part by people like Kyle Charles and Vic Malhotra, who make the violence grounded even when there are alien tentacles smacking people). In this issue, we get a bit of the contemplative narration right at the beginning, before it all starts to hit the fan. After that, it’s a straight mix between brawling and one last conversation with Sasha and her daughter.
Looking back on the series as a whole, I’m surprised by just how optimistic it ends up being about human nature, even if the optimism is somewhat backhanded. After all, so much of what seems to make those aliens so strong is in copying the worst parts of ourselves. All of that destructiveness and greed ends up being enormously powerful and destructive. But in the end, that destructiveness is impotent. Anything the aliens create is an imperfect kind of simulacra, one that doesn’t even seem to be able to obey their commands fully. They might want to be humanity, but the actual things that make us human are beyond their control, and ultimately are poisonous to them. The better angels of our nature do count for something, according to Moreci & Co.
Were there plot details that still confuse me? Yes. I wish we’d spent more time with MoiraTech, who appeared to be Weiland-Yutani types, but we never saw much of past the second series. Who was real and who was fake in this series? The exact chain of events at the end of this book also threw me for a bit, and I’m still not totally confident I could describe it without missing a key detail. Whatever. At a certain point, I’m not sure it’s useful for a series to explain each and every detail to its readers, and as long as the missing pieces don’t massively contradict parts of the story, they do no real harm.
Looking back on the series, the first book might still be my favorite, if only because it felt so much bleaker than the other two. In Clandestiny and Monadic, you had the feeling that aliens were the worst thing human beings were facing. When the series began, we were very much our own worst enemy. Then again, I’m kind of a melancholic and moody person, so it makes sense that that would be the part that appeals to me. Clandestiny had its own sadness, but instead of focusing on the evil that people do, it hones in on the regrets that we carry through life. Sasha’s sadness over her daughter is really applicable to everybody; at some point, we pass up things we wish we could back and do over.
Monadic’s strength then might be in going back and resolving both of those themes. If human beings were the problem in the first book, they ultimately are the solution in the series finale. At our best, we can solve problems that are bigger than us, especially if we can just cooperate for a bit. And in terms of regret, Monadic tries to show that regrets over the past can be answered. Sasha’s arc from the last series gets some closure as she spends time with her daughter; even if it’s not real, it feels real, and that manages to be close enough to do the trick. It joins everything together at both the literal level of the story as well as conceptually.
Fare thee well, Roche Limit. This series set a high bar for others to follow.
Rating: 9.5/10
Zeb Larson
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