Eyes of the Void - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Eyes of the Void is the sequel to the excellent Shards of Earth, which we reviewed, well, far too long ago now. I think the sequel must have been held up by the pandemic. But in any case, it's going to be on shelves soon, so it's time to give it a look and see whether it's worth reading. .

Yes.

Just wanted to get that out of the way right off the bat. This is top quality space opera. It has characters you can sympathise with, and empathise with. It has some aliens that feel like people, but also feel different, with perspective soutside our experience. It has some humans that feel like aliens, too. Some because they've modified themselves in personal ways that change the way they present, some because of the way their society shaped them, and some just because their perspective has shifted out past the lens of common experience. This is one of Tchaikovsky's strenghts: giving us a vast array of different possibilities embodied in people. This is a universe steeped in the waters of conflict, one aware of the costs, but it's also a universe teetering on the ege of transhumanism, of defining, redefining and ignoring what different people think it means to be human. The breadth of imagination on display is stunning. From the technologically super-powered clams, whose dialogue is delphic enough it requires interpretation by human acolytes, through the society of tank-grown women, determined to save both the universe and themselves, to the shattered remnants of a grimy human polity, struggling to rebuild itself after an apocalyptic conflict, and beyond that into the truly unknown. Every few pages you're left thinking "Oh, that's pretty cool." In its depth and detail, grandeur and grime, there's a living, breathinng universe resting in the pages in front of you, and it always feels vibrant and real. 

The characters...well, in a way there's no surprises. You'll know the central cast of reprobates from the previous book. I still have every sympathy for Idris, a man brought out of time, both metaphorically and physically. A man crushed by the things that were done by and to him during a past war, now desperately trying to rebuild in peace - or at least, prevent atrocities from happenning again. And his crew of smart mouthed, feisty folk are as diverse, exciting and entertaining as ever. Watching a ships lawyer duel with swords as well as words (and sometimes both at once) will never not be fun. As is seeing a giant scorpion battlebot go on a rampage. But I digress. Idris is people. Sad, sometime slonely, feeling a little broken and displaced, but definitely people - and so are all the other folks around him, whether or not they're, well, human. Tchaikovsky shapes his characters with care, giving us people we can feel for, people we can forgive, people we can understand. Whose pain he draws so artfully you can feel it searing your own soul, and whose joy can leave you turning pages on a grey day with a smile.

Basically, to be a little less lyrical for a second, both our protagonists and their foils anre fully realised people in their own right, not ciphers on a page. They live and breathe and feel real, and as a consequence, we, the reader, feel alongside them. I know I've missed these folks, and I bet you have too. 

The plot - well, I won't spoil it. If nothing else, this is another brick thick story, so I'd probably struggle to spoil it if I wanted to, because there's just so much going on at any given ti,e. But somehow it all hangs together, the tightly woven strands of interweaving story and character drama coming together to make a narrative tapestry that is a thing of beauty. And also a thing that will leave you turning pages late into the night, wanting to know what's going toi happen next. I will say that there's some amazingly depicted space battles, some wonderfully byzantine politics, and a cavacalade of love and joy and sorrow and wrath and defeats and triumphs enough to go around. You're not going to be bored, that's for sure. 

In the end, you're probably here to know if you should reaad this. If you're in the market for a vital, intriguing, fascinating, explosively entertaining space opera, then yes, yes you should. 

Back soon!

We’re moving house this week, so nothing new until we’re back online!

The Justice of Kings - Richard Swan

Sir Konrad Vonvalt is an Emperor's Justice. That means he rides the length and breadth of an empire, bringing the promise of truth, and law, to a fractious and diverse populace. It means investigating murder, it means dabbling in dark powers, and sometimes, just sometimes, it means digging into the truth behind treason. Vonvalt is someone willing to serve the law, to dive into those depths, to follow a trail of evidence wherever it might lead, confident in himself, his team, and the primacy of the law. 

Vonvalt isn't the voice we hear from here though; It's his clerk, Helena, looking back on events with an eye on future triumphs and tragedies, judging herself, her employer, and his associates, through the more jaded lens of history. The Justice of Kings is one part fantasy, one part political intrigue, one part murder investigaiton, and laced through with loss, tragedy, and shared humanity. It is, in sum, a wonderfully well crafted work, and one I want to recommend before diving into some of the detail. 

The world that Vonvalt seeks to keep in order is an unstable one. An Empire slowly being bound together over generations, but still at the stage where those most recently conquered are quickly pressed into conquering their neighbours. It's a patchwork of people who, a few years before, were burning each other's cities to the ground, reaching out and finding the next people ot incorporate. An expansionist machine, with a human cost. And it's an engine of religious orthodoxy, cycling in existing religions and superstitions, and capturing them in its own insitutions, for its own ends. It's driving forward a single cutlure at the point of a sword, and calling it peace.

But it's also, well, peace. Inside the borders, trade goes forward, life goes on, and people don't seme to kill each other, well, not in large numbers, usually. Religions are absorbed, not destroyed, cultures synthesised rather than obliterated. Small comfort to the recently conquered, but they can have a bath and sometimes a functional sewage system for their trouble, and be fairly sure that nobody's going to steal their things at swordpoint. At least not without a trial. 

In the end, the Empire is a fascinating, complex place, a world balanced on precarious politics and progressive but troubling policies. It carries shades of early Imperial Rome in its ancestry, and shades of Rome's successors in the possibility of its decline. Still, for now, the Empire stands tall - a scintillatingly imagined tapestry of a million lights. Or, perhaps more fittingly, a rich gumbo, each flavour something new. 

And swimming in that gumbo are Vonvalt and his team. Helena we come to know well. Young, incisive, with a past that's less troubled and more horrific, she provides the lens through which we see the others. But her older self, looking back, is willing to probe at her own mistakes and victories, at the trail of decisions that leads forward into her now. Helena is passionate, thoughtful, perhaps unsure of herself and who dhe wants to be. Guarded, wrapped in her own emotional armour, and not quite sure how to extricate herself from it - but also able to look through clouds of smoke to the heart of a case, or see what must be done. 

Then there's Bressinger, a veteran of the wars (well, aren't they all, in one way or another), Vonvalt's hard right arm and body-man. At first glance, someone living a long life of slow decline, an attack dog occasionally let off the chain - but Bressinger's loyalties, and history, are more complex than one might expect (though I shan't spoil them here). 

And of course, Vonvalt. A man who, like Bressinger, survived occupation and went on to perpetuate it. A man with a keen sword arm and a keener mind. A man with a zealotry for the law, and the intelligence to exercise that law finely. A man given absolute power of life and death, the power to issue judgments in the Emperor's name - and the ability to use other, less savoury, less natural powers to make sure those judgments are correct. Vonvalt is cultured, clever, morose, difficult, and genuinely entertaining to read. All of their choices matter, but his, perhaps, are the most impactful - as he struggles to make the law work in a society which isn't always ready to accept it, or is in fact actively hostile to the idea of anything other than naked power backed by a blade. Vonvalt has drive, and focus and determination, and a certain flexibility within his bounds, but is perhaps ill placed to believe in any serious shifts to the social order. 

In any event, they are all fascinating characters, and my simple summary does them a disservice; as readers, we gain a view on all their richly textured lives a the story progresses. But at least go in knowing that these, your cor eprotagonists, are not ciphers. if they are not always likable, then nor are people. if they are prone to sympathy and empathy, blind rage and revenge, that makes them all the more human, the more like us. They are the angels and demons on their own shoulders. 

The story - well, I won't spoil it. But there's a murder investigation to dig your teeth into, one that is fair to the reader in what it reveals and when. perhaps you'll guess how things happenned before it comes onto the page, but perhaps not - I was always a few delighted steps behind the revelations. There's some cracking twists and turns there, enough to keep you intrigued. Then there's the dense, low fantasy politics, with knights on the march, and questions of canon law versus secular authority, and a sense of things fraying at the edges. Where we see the less-than-normal, it has a n impact; snd ewhere we do not, the politics are still dleightfully byzantine whilst also making clear the high stakes in the game. There's blood and death aplenty if that's your thing, breakneck chases, sweeping battles that end in blood and fire, and queit moments of reflection in the eye of the storm. The story, I think, sometimes wants to show us more than it has time for, but what it does give us is an excellent read.

That's a good note to end on actually: this is an excellent read, thoroughly enjoyable, and I suggest you give it a try.