Loka

The Alloy Era, Book 2

By: S.B. Divya

Narrated by: Deepa Samuel

Finding a place to belong becomes a girl’s ambitious quest in a thrilling epic about space, humanity, and self-discovery by S.B. Divya, Hugo and Nebula Award finalist and author of Meru.

Akshaya is the hybrid daughter of a human mother and an alloy, a genetically engineered posthuman—and she’s the future of life on the planet Meru. But not if the determined Akshaya can help it. Before choosing where her future lies, she wants to circumnavigate the most historic orb in the universe—the birthplace of humanity: Earth.

Akshaya’s parents reluctantly agree to her anthropological challenge—one with no assistance from alloy devices, transport, or wary alloys themselves who manage humanity and the regions of Earth called Loka. It’s just Akshaya; her equally bold best friend, Somya; and a carefully planned itinerary threading continent by continent across a wondrous terrain of things she’s never seen: blue skies, sunrises, snowcapped mountains, and roiling oceans.

As the adventure unfolds, the travelers discover love and new friendships, but they also learn the risks of a planet that’s not entirely welcoming. On this trek—rapturous, dangerous, and life-changing—Akshaya will discover what human existence really means.

©2024 Divya Srinivasan Breed. (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“This sequel deepens Meru’s extensive worldbuilding and continues to draw on its core themes of what humanity means in a post-human future. However, this is, at heart, a coming-of-age story that will appeal to young adult readers as much as to older fans of Divya’s.” —Library Journal

“Informed by the author’s experiences working in science and engineering, and struggles with long-Covid-induced chronic fatigue syndrome, the narrative explores questions of belonging and friendship with a clear-eyed precision, bringing to mind the heartfelt emotion of Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers series and the worldbuilding and deep ethical questions of The Terraformers by Analee Newitz. Teen and adult readers alike will easily fall in love with Akshaya and Somya.” —Publishers Weekly

YA spin-off, not sequel

A whole book of a petulant teenager coming around to find that her mother was correct all along. None of the drama felt like there was any real chance of a negative outcome and the one ‘loss’ feels like a token admittance to that fact. The tone of the writing is vastly different from Meru, and overall, it’s hard to believe the same author wrote both, as Loka feels like a YA fanfic.

Narration is terrible

The story is a basic YA adventure novel. That's kne of the last things I wanted the sequel to Meru to be. However, that's a personal preference. The narration is objectively bad. There are missing words and mispronounced words ittered throughout the story. The teenage voice the narrator tries to convey sounds way to childlike. The connotations are almost like a toddler would talk with the main character, but it's inconsistent. The author is not that great. Many times she described a character as "giving a ____face to me" She gave me a I don't know what your saying face. she gave me a keep the peace face. It's all, not very good.