Reading Review - L'Arche de Mère by Pierre Bordage

I would like to start a new kind of posts. A book review. I like science-fiction (and a bit of fanstastic / medieval) and why not write some short posts about what I'm reading ?

First of all, it’s a bit odd, but I post the articles in English… though I read all the books in French… in the case of this book, that’s actually quite useful since the author is French. But there might be some inconsistencies in the names. I have no idea if this book has even been translated into English ..

Pierre Bordage is a French science fiction writer who, sadly, just passed away at the end of December 2025...
I had never read a single one of his novels, but the other day while passing by a bookstore, I bought the book without expecting much from it.

The book was published in 2025, a few months before his death. It is therefore his last novel.
I won’t summarize the story—there are plenty of articles about it online. I’d rather share my impressions.

This is supposed to be a kind of Science fiction book. #

First of all, it’s an “easy” read. I can’t say it’s great literature, nor did I have to reread certain sentences several times to understand the context... The writing is easy to read and the style is pleasant (though perhaps a bit “too” simple at times).

The characters are a bit soulless. Character development is minimal; everything focuses on the action. It’s also not the kind of novel with a lot of description or explanation.

The narrative structure is classic: it focuses on several groups of characters, each with one or two main characters within the group whom we follow individually. By the end of the novel, these groups converge. Don’t worry, you won’t have any trouble remembering all the characters—you aren’t overwhelmed by a flood of names. Beyond that, the interactions between the different characters aren't really that engaging.

The same goes for the descriptions of the settings—they’re minimal; there’s practically nothing there.
So, without going as far as a Zola-style description where it takes 10 pages to describe a single room, I would have liked a little more detail to create immersion. Here, it’s really bare-bones—or even less.

It’s the kind of book where the entire plot unfolds through the characters’ dialogue.

The “lore” is minimal; I feel like we barely have time to get immersed and The plot is frankly not great—everything is transparently contrived, and the resolution doesn’t add much.
Science fiction here is just a pretext; there’s no epic scope, and practically no sci-fi elements (don’t worry, there are spaceships, and it takes place in space between different planets). But that adds nothing to the plot, and the space opera aspect is really thin.

In any case, it’s an easy read—it’s not exactly “challenging,” and the pages turn relatively quickly.
If you're an "HardSF" fan you can also forget this book, science is twisted in every direction here. There is no scientific explanation for anything.

By the three-quarter mark of the novel, you can guess how it’s going to end, and the ending is actually a bit disappointing.

At least I read the whole thing without getting bored : #

Sometimes I start reading a book but give up after the first 50 or 100 pages (for example, I never managed to finish the first tome of Game of Thrones...) The most important thing is that I read the whole book, and I didn’t “suffer” while turning the pages, as is sometimes the case with certain novels. It’s not a novel that requires much concentration—or any at all.

I don’t know, it might even have been a novel for teens :D

In the end, it didn’t really blow me away; It was a easy reading but I think I’ll have forgotten this novel in six months...

Sorry, Pierre, and rest in peace.

#book #reading #science-fiction