This was a great idea for a scifi novella, it had that element that I was looking for and thought the overall concept worked in the plot. It had that scifi element that I wanted with being trapped in a child’s body. The concept worked well and I enjoyed getting to know the characters and the danger of their situation. Mary Thompson wrote this well and left me wanting to read more in this world and from Mary Thompson.

Interesting concept that is very well executed in this novella. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for this free eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

There was a time in my life during which I did not want to read new authors. I was very happy reading works by those writers whose work I was not only familiar with, but comfortable with. And why not? At that period of my life, when I was discovering science fiction, discovering who I was as a reader, there was plenty of material written by the authors I loved. I was just discovering them, and there were worlds to be explored. Of course, I grew older, my tastes expanded, and to be honest, those favorite authors of mine were either not writing books any more or were slowing down considerably. So I had to expand and adapt. And new writers become the lifeblood of the field. They become the authors that newer generations of readers cut their science fiction teeth on. The circle of life, I guess.

There are new authors, and then there are new authors to me. Mary G. Thompson is one of those new authors to me, and my understanding is that "One Level Down" is Thompson's debut novel for adults. She has primarily been a writer of science fiction and fantasy for children and young adults. "One Level Down" is a terrific novella, and a heck of a way to kick off her adult writing career, should she decide to continue to do so.

Ella is a 58 year old woman living in a 5 year old's body. She lives in a simulated world on a planet to which some of the inhabitants of Earth have traveled to in order to start a new life away from the decaying Earth they grew up on. I suppose I ought to back that up a bit. They came to this planet, but there was a plague of sorts killing the colonists. They came here originally to live a life on a planet where they could live out an ideal existence. Because of the plague, Ella's father Phil - known as Daddy to her - and the leader of the colony struck a deal with the company that makes pocket alternate universes to create a simulation of the town that he wanted every one to live in. Every 60 years a technician from that company comes to the town to make sure everything is working correctly and fix things that aren't.

Well, things aren't working okay. Sure, there are the usual things. Socks have gone missing (no mention of Tupperware(r) or any other household item familiar to us), birds have disappeared, things like that. The technician can easily fix those elements (the software folks reading this can and should interpret the word elements as you would expect - objects created by code that somehow got deleted). But there is something going wrong that is much more serious. Phil wants to keep the town the way he remembers things from the past. People who cross Phil get killed, deleted from the simulation. Phil is the only one in the town that has the power to do that, and he uses that power to keep people in line. The one other thing he wants to stay as it was in his memory is his daughter Ella. He wants her to be five years old because that's how he remembers her in his memory of perfection.

But as previously stated, Ella is 58 years old. She has the intellect of a 58 year old and the experiences of a 58 year old, but she always has to act 5 years old around Daddy. Ella is afraid of what Daddy will do not only to her but to her adult friends that are helping her, letting her read books to educate her, providing her with adult experiences. Phil has ultimate power, and she and everyone else is afraid of him.

The clue, of course, is that Ella is 58. A technician is due shortly to come and iron out the issues in the town. Ella knows that, and sees the technician as her way out of the nightmare Daddy has created for her. And the arrival of the technician is the place at which the story's true meaning and intent kick into high gear. "One Level Down" is not just a story of a despotic leader using fear to hold his subjects in line. It's a story that explores the possibilities of life in simulated universes - and whether the real world really is a "real world".

"One Level Down" is, as I said previously, a terrific novella, one which I would highly recommend to readers. It's well written, the characters are well developed, and it does make readers think about the nature of existence. I'm eagerly awaiting the next adult science fiction story from Thompson. I guess I might want to explore her YA work as well.

What a wonderful novella! Excellent on every level. I may be rating this particularly highly because I’ve read some real stinkers recently, but man, it’s so nice to read something by an author that has a good grasp of basic concepts like “pacing” and “dialogue that doesn’t read like it was written by an alien who doesn’t quite get what humans speak like”.

The concept and worldbuilding are strong (even more so with the twist halfway through). I loved Ella as a character. The way she reacts to the horror of her situation was just chilling, and I’ll have to pass this along to a friend who is very interested in children’s rights, because Ella’s experiences line up with things I’ve heard from her. The supporting cast is well done; they obviously aren’t as fleshed out as characters in a novel would be, but they work for what this is. I particularly like the ambiguity of Phil’s character, which I won’t get into deeply here for spoiler reasons, but she does a really admirable job of making a character who objectively sucks but has a reason for why he sucks. The story is perfectly paced and works great as a novella (though to be clear, I would absolutely read a novel about Ella and/or this world). It can be a bit explicit with its theming at times, but I found that forgivable. I hope Thompson writes more in this setting, or at the very least writes more for adult readers.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the opportunity to read an eARC for Mary Thompson's novella "One Level Down".

In the not-too-distant future, humankind has developed the technology not only to travel between the stars, but also to download the human consciousness into designer simulations. On one far flung planet, a homesteading colony chooses to have all the surviving members of a deadly planetary epidemic downloaded into a virtual copy of their colony. In return for mining rights on the homesteaded planet, the corporation will design the virtual universe and maintain the servers perpetually, sending a technician to visit inside the simulation once every sixty years to ensure a continuous, smooth operation. Five-year-old Ella eagerly awaits the arrival of a technician since she has been forced by her "Daddy", the colony founder, to continue acting like a five-year-old for more than fifty years. The time for the technician to visit is nigh, and Ella needs to be prepared to see if there was any way she can escape.

Thompson's novella was incredibly enjoyable and thought provoking. Really excellent philosophical questions wrapped in the trappings of science fiction. I look forward to finding and reading some of her other works and any future works going forward.

The first chapter of One Level Down, by Mary G. Thompson, is unnerving and fascinating; the second is chilling and horrifying, and I had to take a break from reading it for a couple of days; however, when I nerved myself to continue, I found the focused self-control and resilience of the protagonist inspiring, and I was rewarded with a very satisfying conclusion. This is a novella with a compelling character and some really interesting ideas, and I will definitely be looking for more from Thompson.

Thompson’s prior science fiction and fantasy novels have been written for middle grade and YA markets, but this is most definitely not a story that I would recommend for children. Ella, the protagonist-narrator (first person, present tense) is a 58-year-old person trapped for decades in a five-year-old’s body, and her life has been a horror. I can’t quite call Ella a woman the way the publisher’s promotional copy does, because her life has been severely restricted by her father, limiting her education and life experiences via programming, social pressure, example, and physical violence. So although she’s certainly seen some shocking things, she’s never really had the chance to grow up emotionally, let alone physically. And being allowed to grow isn’t even really her main focus; what she wants most is just to get away from her terrible father, who insists that she present herself as a happy little child all the time, or else.

The trapping and programming come into the story because Ella and her community are inhabitants of a virtual world. They had gone as settlers to a distant planet, but disease killed off a lot of the population, and the rest retreated into a simulated universe, where they don’t get sick or die of old age. The colony’s founder, owner, and programmer, Phil, takes solace in his perfect little daughter, and he won’t have it any other way. He keeps an iron group on his little community through deletion, which he has carried out more than once (with a cover story of people moving to a “Western Settlement”). However, every 60 years, a Technician comes by the planet to do maintenance on the system, and Ella is determined to make the most of this opportunity.

Luckily for Ella, she is observant and smart. She has figured out several truths that her father has tried to hide from her, and she has been forced to learn to be a good actress. Her plan of asking the Technician for help may not exactly work out the way she had hoped, but she has a backup plan, too.

However, this isn’t just the story of one little old girl resisting one sick, evil man; it’s also the story of the society that allows this to happen. The corporation that created and maintains the digital world for this settlement doesn’t seem to care what happens as long as the physical resource extraction continues. Most people in the community have reasonably happy day-to-day lives, as long as they don’t make waves. Their digital selves don’t get sick or get old; other children besides Ella grow normally. And the original settlers all had signed contracts granting control to Ella’s father, even though they didn’t understand everything that they were giving up at the time.

Naturally, this situation makes me think of Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (and various works in conversation with that story since then). No one can walk away from this community, though; the only way to reject this supposed paradise is for someone to question/resist Phil so much that he deletes them. And most of the inhabitants probably don’t think much about what’s happening to the little girl who never grows up, when she’s behind the closed doors of her father’s house. For instance, there’s a teacher who occasionally seems sympathetic, and even lends Ella extra books, but she mostly tries to get Ella to play along like a normal child, for the sake of the other children or for her own safety.

Besides Ella’s own situation, the worldbuilding here is interesting. Many people have left the overpopulated, degraded Earth to settle other planets, but many of these settlements haven’t worked out too well; therefore, many people have retreated to a myriad of virtual realities (as long as they have resources to trade for maintenance of those habitats). Rules of physics can be changed for those digital homes. Some people even question whether the original universe may itself be some kind of simulation. Ella has lots of questions about this, and the reader doesn’t get to find out many of the answers, but it’s all interesting to think about.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I found the resolution of One Level Down very satisfying; however, there are actually a couple of different resolutions. I don’t want to explain how things worked out in multiple ways, because that would be a spoiler, but I found the different endings and how they ended up combining to be refreshingly surprising. I was really happy with how Ella eventually stood up for herself, and talked back, both to her father and to the community who let him abuse her, and how she eventually found ways to grow after all.

There are some tough parts to get through in this novella, but it’s really worth it. I love it, and I highly recommend it, for anyone who won’t be too triggered by the abuse (which is mostly just referred to as having happened, not directly played out in scenes in the book). At the end, Ella and a couple of allies are planning to help a lot of other people in various other pocket universes. I love the thought of that.