In the opening pages of The Best Of All Possible Worlds, author Karen Lord shatters the universe she’s created. A heavily populated planet, virtually the galaxy’s capital, has been poisoned. An ambitious novel with such a premise might focus on who committed the crime, why it was done, the galactic fallout, the power vacuum, wars, refugees, and so on. Lord doesn’t do that. Instead, she tries something that might be even more ambitious, even when it doesn’t fully succeed: She turns her novel into a low-key travel and romance story.
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