In J L Butterworth’s The Unknown Before Us, Arcadia is happily exploring the edges of known space, looking for wild and adorable animals with her AI buddy Exbee, when she discovers an old Earth soldier, Blaze, who’s been in stasis for the last 200 years.

Let’s talk about the amazing worldbuilding first.  Slice-of-life scifi can be so fun to read, especially with multiple civilizations and factions. (I loved this in Sierra Branham’s Love Galaxy, too.) Arcadia and Blaze have the perfect perspectives to share the world with readers, because for Arcadia, this is her every day world, and for Blaze, everything is new and noteworthy. I loved this dynamic in John Maddox Robert’s Space Angel, as experienced spacer Torwald shows the new ship’s boy Kelly around.

As I read The Unknown Before Us, I enjoyed all the descriptions, and there’s a lot of time and effort into crafting backstories of passing characters, ecosystems of planets, or explanations of past events.  I would definitely read another book set in this world. Scifi can be fascinating escapism, and the market scenes and planet exploration here are just perfect for that. Plus, in this future world, each ship needs a cat, because cats are smart little companions who take care of pests. Perfect.

But the story is focused around Arcadia, and this is a hard protagonist to care about, mostly because she’s better than everyone at everything, and this type of character creates the opposite of narrative tension for me.  Arcadia spends her days exploring and looking for new creatures to document and categorize, which brings readers to interesting new places. Meanwhile, her AI makes deepfake videos of her (ugh) for social media, so she’s also a celebrity with loads of fans, and she’s a billionaire, with more money than she bothers to keep track of, unless she’s telling Blaze he can’t have an expensive Rolex. She knows where to go and what to do at all times, and she’s always carrying whatever she needs, which is a great method for smoothly introducing the world to readers, but less engaging for character development or emotional impact.  At no point did I worry that she would actually be in danger or experience any negative results, and that reduced any emotional response for me on their adventures.

Blaze is the opposite, poor guy wakes up 200 years in the future, and spends the rest of the book confused.  He makes a great introduction to the world, because it’s as new and interesting to Blaze as it is to the reader.  I had more concern for Blaze, but I still wasn’t too worried about him, even when he does risky newbie things like signing up for a random fight, because I figured if he got terribly hurt, Arcadia would just mock him and patch him back up.

There’s a scene at the very end that explains a lot of Blaze’s character. It was strange reading because this scene felt sooooooooooo forced. A recording of villain monologue, explaining one’s dark plan and horrible motivations straight out? So forced. But at the same time, I could also see how the big reveal here wasn’t actually a big reveal, we’ve seen the results of this in Blaze’s personality through the novel.  

Overall, The Unknown Before Us offers a fascinating world to discover, with quirky side characters who have their own backstories and motivations, and all sorts of intriguing future customs, although the character development and emotional impact for the two leads could definitely be stronger.