Emma Newman

"Atlas left earth 40 years ago with 1,000 passengers seeking greater pastures in space. One of them was Carlos Moreno's mother, changing his life forever at an age too young to do anything about it. Enter Alejandro Casales, leader of the Circle, a religious cult that thrives on simplicity above all else. Now, after Carlos has left the Circle in his past, he is an indentured Ministry of Justice employee, assigned to the investigation after Casales is found dead in his hotel room."--Booklist.

A Planetfall Novel

After Atlas

Lindy

Some of the "twists" weren't all that twisty, but gosh do i love Newman's worldbuilding.

Maggie Gordon

After Atlas is a companion novel to Planetfall, taking place back on Earth with characters who were left behind. Specifically, our protagonist is Carlos, a man owned by the Noropean Ministry of Justice. Yes, I said owned. This is a neoliberal dystopia. The world is largely controlled by gov-corps, and individuals can easily find themselves owned by employers. Carlos' mother was chosen for the Atlas mission, but his father was excluded at the last minute, and he rapidly fell into a deep depression. Enter Alejandro, leader of the Circle cult, dedicated to rejecting many forms of modern technology. Carlos spent his childhood in the cult, but left at 16, penniless and without support. In a neoliberal world, there were no real charities. Just sex traffickings and "hot houses" where he was selected and altered to become a fantastic investigator for the Ministry of Justice in London. As he slowly works to buy his freedom (over the course of decades), his life is ended with Alejandro turns up dead in a hotel in Britain and Carlos is selected as the primary investigator. 

What starts as a simply murder mystery rapidly expands into conspiracies upon conspiracies. Alejandro and the Circle seem to have changed exponentially since Carlos left the compound, and his former mentor's actions seem remarkably out of character. All the different gov-corps are engaging in power maneuvers to try and gain something out of Alejandro's death. Carlos has to walk a painfully dangerous line between finding the truth and not pissing anyone off enough to destroy his life. He fails. 

While Planetfall deals with the interesting question of mental illness and space exploration, After Atlas takes us back to Earth and gives us a very grounded dystopia. This is a world where capitalism has been allowed to leap forward to its inevitable conclusions. Everything is up for purchase, including your body and your mind. It's a chilling world that I found much more satisfying than a lot of other recent dystopias. 

What also sets After Atlas apart is the fact that the narrative isn't about a revolution. Carlos does not join a group of people trying to fix the world. (view spoiler)[In fact, once the conspiracies have been stripped away, the central goal of all the parties is to leave Earth behind, and to be the first to do this, regardless of who is left behind. While I found myself lukewarm to Planetfall's strange ending, After Atlas' final pages were enthralling. Carlos manipulates the Circle into giving him a seat on their ship. As they take off, he watches the world erupt into war, different parties trying to stymie the others from being able to leave as well with missiles and bombs. Carlos was able to leave, but the Earth and its people are almost destroyed and he on a ship with people who were perfectly okay with this, heading towards a colony that readers who have finished Planetfall know is a mess itself. (hide spoiler)] There's no happy ending in these pages. Just the question of what comes next, and I really hope there will be another book attached to this universe to explore the terrible situations humanity has put itself in. Will we eventually rise up to fix ourselves? Will something help us?

Ben Nathan

4.5/5 and I went with my gut so I put 4. An exploration of feelings hidden in a murder mystery. Best summed up by me feeling so smart for figuring it out and then immediately being told it was obvious and the story is so much more than that.

Lisa Beasley

This was amazing. There was mystery, drama, science fiction, everything. I really liked the storyline and the characters were all amazing. Emma Newman does incredible characters and character focus without losing anything in the tight well written plot. Amazing.

Acclaimed author Emma Newman returns to the captivating universe she created in Planetfall with a stunning science fiction mystery where one man's murder is much more than it seems... Gov-corp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos's entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away; what made his father lose hope; what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas's departure, it's got something to do why Casales was found dead in his hotel room-and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation. To figure out who killed one of the most powerful men on Earth, Carlos is supposed to put aside his personal history. But the deeper he delves into the case, the more he realizes that escaping the past is not so easy. There's more to Casales's death than meets the eye, and something much more sinister to the legacy of Atlas than anyone realizes...

After Atlas A Planetfall Novel

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