Square³
Mira Grant
Square-Cube Laws conspicuously absent
Here's how the publisher's blurb for Square³ begins:
We think we understand the laws of physics. We think reality is an immutable monolith, consistent from one end of the universe to the next. We think the square/cube law has actual relevance.
We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong.
I'd like to take a moment to appreciate what a great intro that is for a book. But not THIS book. It is not even slightly relevant to what's inside Square³.
The rest of the blurb, thankfully, is better. It's a pretty good summary of the plot, and I will not repeat it. Like many Mira Grant stories (Mira Grant is of course a pen-name of Seanan McGuire's, but the books she publishes as Mira Grant have a distinctive character), this one is centered an a relationship between two people who love each other. In this case it is a pair of sisters, Susan and Katharine Black, who are separated from each other by an extradimensional incursion 16-May-2022. (I read this 8-Aug-2022, and noted with relief that the date of the predicted tragedy had already passed without incident. Presumably we are now safe.)
Like most Mira Grant stories, this one contains a super-obnoxious scientist cosplayer (the aforementioned Susan Black) and a gigantic government conspiracy. I enjoyed the read, but less than most of McGuire's work. It all seemed very sketchy, not well thought out. The relationship of the sisters was the best part, but fairly minor in the sense that most of the words and pages concern other things.
Just for the Hell of it, since square/cubed laws appear nowhere in the book outside the publisher's blurb, here's what they are. There is no such thing as "THE square/cube law", rather, there are a bunch of them. They are the reason that you can't have giants. For instance, the physical strength of a limb (such as a leg) goes as the square of its linear size, i.e. as "size times size". The weight of a body goes as the cube of the linear size, i.e. "size times size times size". If you take any animal, for instance a human, and scale it up proportionately, the weight increases much faster than the strength. Like, a person twice as big as normal would weigh eight times normal, but be four times as strong as normal. So a giant human would collapse. (In actual fact, very tall people have serious health problems.) The largest animal that has ever lived is the blue whale (yes, bigger than dinosaurs) -- it survives in part because it lives in water and doesn't need to support its weight. There are similar relationships for respiration -- the amount of oxygen you need goes as the cube of size, while your ability to taken in oxygen from the air goes as the square of size. Dinosaurs were possible in part because there was more oxygen in the air in the Cretaceous. For flying animals, lift goes as square of size, while weight, as already stated, goes as the square. Thus animals with true flight are relatively small.
Some giant monsters make a brief appearance in Square³. I suppose, in a pinch McGuire could point to that to justify the title.