author name

Lost in Translation
by Edward Willett

DAW 2007

Edward Willett has been publishing nonfiction and award-winning SF for young adults through various small presses for years, but Lost in Translation is his first mass market SF paperback release, so for most readers he will appear as a new author. And a very fine discovery he is!

The book opens on the doomed attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with the S'sinn, a species of demon-like aliens who are determined to eliminate humanity, and then quickly flashes back to the experiences of the two children (one S'sinn, one human) who have grown up to become their race's respective translators at these last chance negotiations. Both translators have been traumatized by the previous war between humans and S'sinn, and can barely tolerate the thought of being on the same stage with the hated enemy, let alone establishing the empathic link that is the basis of inter-species translation. Nevertheless, they manage to rise to the occasion — at which point, things get a lot more complicated.

My initial response to the early chapters was that WillettÕs depiction of the politics was perhaps a little one-dimensional, his characters a little naive, but as the book progressed, so did the layers of ethical issues with which the protagonists have to contend, and in the end Willett manages to up the characterization ante, Babylon-5-style. I still retain one or two minor reservations about the deus ex machina happy ending, which I found a bit too tidy to be completely satisfying, but I am pretty sure that is just me.