#BlogTour ‘Goldilocks’ by Laura Lam

About the book…

The Earth is in environmental collapse. The future of humanity hangs in the balance. But a team of women are preparing to save it. Even if they’ll need to steal a spaceship to do it.

Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation.

The team is humanity’s last hope for survival, and Valerie has gathered the best women for the mission: an ace pilot who is one of the only astronauts ever to have gone to Mars; a brilliant engineer tasked with keeping the ship fully operational; and an experienced doctor to keep the crew alive. And then there’s Naomi Lovelace, Valerie’s surrogate daughter and the ship’s botanist, who has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity to step out of Valerie’s shadow and make a difference.

The problem is that they’re not the authorized crew, even if Valerie was the one to fully plan the voyage. When their mission is stolen from them, they steal the ship bound for the new planet.

But when things start going wrong on board, Naomi begins to suspect that someone is concealing a terrible secret — and realizes time for life on Earth may be running out faster than they feared . . .

Goldilocks is a bold and thought-provoking new thriller for readers of The Martian and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Hugest of thanks to blogtour supremo Anne Cater, of Random Things Tours, for this fabulous opportunity to read what, in this humble reader’s opinion, will be a book of the year. ‘Goldilocks’ by Laura Lam is out now from Headline in hardcover and ebook formats (hopefully an audio book in the future?)

It’s at once a feminist parable, a future thriller, a mystery and a dystopian tale which is a huge undertaking for any author and yet Laura carries it off. The narrative goes spinning out in space making the possibilities of the story of these 5 women feel endless ad limitless, whilst being confined by their biology and inherent claustrophobic quarters of their spaceship, relationships are played out across multiple timeframes.

From the prologue which sets this as the only time Naomi, one of the 5 crew members of the Atalanta spaceship will tell what happened on that voyage, to the journey she takes, this neatly builds up suspense and tension in the mind of the reader as you constantly have that ‘what happened? what went wrong?’ in the back of your mind.

Goldilocks, the fairy tale, is used as a cautionary one to warn girls not to take more than their share, what is given them is enough and they don’t need to ask for more-to do so risks moral character and such disatisfaction, and theft, is a character defect. In worlds built for, and engineered by, men who represent the norm, and women as a lesser species, however, this tale shows that girls have to go for, and grab what they can, until they find what’s best for them, what tastes right.

Valerie Black, her daughter Naomi, same sex couple Hixon and Hart, as well as outsider Lebedevra steal the Atalanta. Funded and created from Valerie and other scientists extensive research and money, they find themselves on the outside of the mission to locate, and colonise a new Earth. The threat to humanity’s future is a ticking clock to extinction-set in a not too far off future, there are mere decades left after Earth’s resources have been plundered past resurrection point.

Their only hope is to fly the Atalanta into a warp ring discovered off Mars and then to bounce off there to a planet called Cavendish. As soon as it is settled, an ark will begin transporting humans to the planet to begin again.

But in the process, US President Cochran (such a great name!) is scaling back the roles and rights of women, so despite bank rolling the project, Valerie and her crew are not even considered good enough for the backups who were supposed to be out into a cryogeneic sleep in case the original 5 don’t survive the time jump.

Instead, Valerie steals the ship under the noses of NASA, accompanied by her botanist daughter who has always wanted to go into space but found each step thwarted due to her sex. As the journey prgresses, Valerie’s plans become clear-she plans to hold Cavendish at ransom to give normal people, not the privilged elite, the first shot at being able to set up a new society without making the mistakes of the old one. A noble plan, to be sure, but will the crew go along with it? What happens when they reach there?

Will they reach Mars, let alone Cavendish?

Followed into space by Earth set missives giving you the reaction back on Earth-which turns from bargaining to threats, super quickly-the focus is on these 5 women and how they interact, hopw they cope and how they plan for the future. Using science and technology, their hope is to reach the Goldilocks zone and re-establish humanity.

I don’t want to compare it to any other dystopian thriller as this stands entirely on its own merits-it is engaging, beautiful , vividly imagined and equisitely wrought . The role that sex plays in opportunities given, and chances taken is so well rendered, you totally go along with the story and are willing the 5 to make it Cavendish, you want this utopia to be a reality. I don’t want to say anymore about the plot for fear of spoilers, but I will say this is stupidly highly beyond the stars recommended by me, I loved it so much and cannot wait for my hardcover to arrive and then read it all over again!

About the author…

Laura Lam was born in the late eighties and raised near San Francisco, California, by two former Haight-Ashbury hippies.

After studying literature and creative writing at university, she relocated to Scotland to be with the partner she met online when they were teenagers and he insulted her taste in books and she insulted his right back. She is now a dual citizen, but at times she misses the sunshine.

While working a variety of jobs, she began writing. ‘Pantomime’, the first book in the award winning Micah Grey series, was released in 2013. Robin Hobb says “Pantomime by Laura Lam took me into a detailed and exotic world, peopled by characters that I’d love to be friends with . . . and some I’d never want to cross paths with.” The rest of the series is ‘Shadowplay’, ‘Masquerade’, and the ‘Vestigial Tales’.

Her near future cyberpunk thrillers include ‘False Hearts’ and ‘Shattered Minds’. Her short work has appeared in Scotland in Space, ‘Nasty Women’, ‘Solaris Rising 3’, ‘Cranky Ladies Of History’, and more. She also writes f/f romance as Laura Ambrose.

Her 2020 releases include Goldilocks, about the first all-female mission to an exosolar planet, and ‘Seven Devils’, co-written with Elizabeth May, which is about a group of women smashing a patriarchal evil empire in space.

She is still hiding from sunshine in Scotland where she lectures in creative writing at Napier University and writes more stories

Links-http://www.lauralam.co.uk/

Twitter @LR_Lam  @annecater @headlinepg