Ofelia has lived on a colony world for 40 years when the company funding the colonization has decided that the colony is a failure, must be disbanded, and all the citizens must be shipped off to another planet. Ofelia refuses to go, and manages to stay behind while the rest of the colonists leave. She happily lives on the planet completely alone, until, out of nowhere, the aliens who are native to the planet decide to make themselves known. Although I liked the setup for this first contact story, none of the characters in it—not the humans, nor the aliens—felt believable, which felt like a waste of a good premise.
I understand the intent with Ofelia was to have a strong female protagonist who was tired of always being told what to do (e.g., by her husband, the corporations, the other colonists), and would rather be all alone on a planet than to put up with their shit any longer. I totally get that. That said, it was a bit tough to believe that she’d be perfectly happy being 100% alone, away from all other people, indefinitely. Even in prison, where you’re not exactly surrounded by loving friends and family, solitary confinement is still considered one of the harshest punishments.
But even that’s more believable than the aliens she eventually meets. It’s a totally different planet, light years from earth, with totally different biology (none of which humans can eat), but the creatures are essentially the Star Treak take on aliens: humans painted a slightly different color, with a few extra wrinkles. They have two legs with toes, two arms with fingers, a head with two eyes and two ears a nose and a mouth, they walk upright, they are warm-blooded, they breathe oxygen, they communicate via spoken sounds from their mouth, and so on. The only significant difference is that they have four fingers and toes instead of five. Gasp!
But the worst part is that the entire story turns into a ham-fisted narrative of how evil humans are (especially men!), while the “primitive natives” are all enlightened and living in harmony with nature and each other. Kumbaya. Don’t get me wrong, the aliens and their interaction with Ofelia could be cute and charming, and that can make parts of the story fun to read, but it felt like an overly naive, and overly lefty version of what first contact would look like. I much prefer the aliens in books like Story of Your Life, Blindsight, Solaris, and Contact: aliens who are notably different than us, where communication is difficult, and a mutual understanding may be impossible.
