ALN Monthly Book Club: The Chaotic Orbits Trilogy (Old Town)

For our July Monthly Book Club, we will be reading Beth Revis's Chaotic Orbits Trilogy ("Full Speed to a Crash Landing," "How to Steal a Galaxy," and "Last Chance to Save the World")!

We will be hosting this event IN PERSON, outdoors, at Presidio Park in Old Town! We recommend (but do not require) that attendees wear masks and maintain social distance.

We typically meet at the picnic tables in the shade at the end of the loop made by Cosoy Way. Please see the embedded map below for more details.

Content warning: PG level PDA and human suffering. Details not given here to avoid spoilers. Contact an organizer if you have concerns about the book's content.

Ada Lamarr and Rian White live on opposite sides of the law, but sometimes they're both working toward the same goal. Fun, space adventure vibe.

We hope to see you there!

Upcoming Events:
August: The Spear Cuts Through Water, by Simon Jimenez
EPIC: The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon
September: 2026-2027 ALN Book Selection!

Questions:

Intros: When space tourists come to visit Earth, where will you take them in San Diego?

1. Is Ada an unreliable narrator? Did you figure out what she was doing before she explained it? Is it "fair" for her to keep information from the reader? Or did she give away too much? Did her reveals feel like plot twists to you, or just a natural continuation of what she'd already explained?

2. Do you agree more with Ada's approach to making change, or with Rian's? Can real change be made within legal frameworks? Is it okay to do illegal things if you have the right motive? Do the ends justify the means? Does getting paid to do something make it less moral?

3. Ada believes that government can only be effective at smaller levels. Do you think that this is true? If humanity spreads to other planets, will we have interplanetary government? Will it eliminate smaller, more local governments?

4. What are the ethics of keeping artifacts in museums vs in private collections? Does it make a difference if private collectors preserve their artifacts or consume them?

5. Is Strom Fetor a good character? Or is he too much of a caricature to be a believable villain?

6. Is it inherently evil to maximize profit off something that could help others? Why do we villianize people who make money of of medical treatments, but don't have the same attitude towards people who don't try to help at all?

7. What do you think about using technology to modify the environment? How has humanity done in our attempts so far?

8. When we domesticate a species, do we have a long term obligation to it?

9. How do you feel about a trilogy of novellas? Would these stories work better as a trilogy of full length novels? Or as a single book? Would you have felt differently about this if you had to wait for months until the next installment was published?

10. The new printing of these books in a single volume is being marketed as a romance. Do you think these books belong in the romance genre?

11. Serialized novels used to be quite common. Why do you think they fell out of favor? Hope could they be commercially successful today? Do you read any fiction in a serialized format?