Furious Heaven - Kate Elliot

Let me open with this: Furious Heaven is a fantastic book, a sequel to the also brilliant Unconquerable Sun. You can say it's a gender-flipped, science-fiction re-imagining of the life of Alexander the Great. I think that's a great summary, but it does the text something of a disservice, because there's just...so much here. Politics. War, encompassing grand strategy and short, brutal tactical engagements. There's family squabbles - and sometimes that family is powerful enough that their disagreements can break worlds. There's friendships and betrayals, and people building on shifting sands, trying to make things better. And in a story built on war, built on conflict, there's a suggestion that the two sides may not be as far apart as all that. 

So yes. This is a clever book, that delves into the depths of politics, violence, warfare, power, friendship...and a lot of other big words. But it's also a fast-paced, action packed story filled with explosions, the occasional assassination, and enough happening on every page that I couldn't put it down. 

As always with Eliot, the worldbuilding is rich and intricate. The Republic of Chaonia is given more texture here; a lavishly wealthy active monarchy, where the queen is the final, absolute authority. A star-spanning political union, the Republic has been shaped by its conflict with its nearest neighbour, the Empire of Phene. They're militaristic, and identify strongly with their political system; they're ready to fight and die for the Republic - and the government of the Republic is more than happy to use its pervasive media control to encourage that willingness in its citizens. In the meantime, the Republic aristocracy are engaged in one-upping, politics, and the occasional bout of murder. And that's just what we know about. Looking at the less than stellar underbelly of the Republic is a delight. We always knew it was a bit sketchy, but placing the characters, most of whom are good people by their own lights, into a worrying system they're largely at the top of and sustaining, is fascinating. And it helps that this contrasts with their adversaries, the Empire of Phene. The Phene are genetically engineered, and seemingly largely egalitarian, a union that believes in equality. But they're also maintained by a shadowy council of "riders", who are kept largely screened from the population they lead, and whose ability to communicate with each other across vast distances is deeply  mysterious and the thing holding their Empire together. The Phene also have their own problems - including experimentation on other sentients, and a whole gamut of politics and backbiting. We get to see more of the latter in this story, which delights in giving us a Phene point of view, to compare with that of the otherwise estimable Princess Sun and her coterie. And amongst these space faring powers sit other, stranger things - including fleets sailing between the stars, and telepathic symbionts, and roses blooming in dead earth. This is a grand universe, one which echoes with history and determination, and one which has enough grease and blood and tears on it that it feels real.

Funnily enough, the same applies to the characters. Sun, our Alexander analogue, continues to blend a regal, mysterious, ruthless public persona with something a little more real, or at least something a little differently real, gentler, more contemplative, in a private context. And she does this while leading a war fleet of ships across the depths of space, slowly concentrating her power and her ambitions and her personal connections,, becoming a personality and a power in her own right, out from under the thumb of her mother, Eirene. Eirene, incidentally, and especially her interactions with Sun, is characterised with exquisite detail - a monarch who broke the mould, who fought through hell and back and made victory out of ashes, and peace out of defeat - and who lives a hard, often transactional existence. Eirene is what Sun could be, one day, if she makes the same kinds of choices - a warning and a celebration all at once. 

And then there's the Wily Persephone. Persephone is one of Sun's companions, an aristocrat, but one who was determined to live out from beneath the shadow of her family intrigues. She's sly, sarcastic, and smart. I'm always here for the witty one-liners, and the refusal to accept other people's nonsense, and Perse delivers on that very well. It helps that she's also a capable leader, and willing to back up being a smart-arse with being willing to kick ass, as necessary. That said, Persephone is still grappling with her need to prove herself as part of Sun's coterie, and with the affection she has for, well, lets say less than suitable admirers. And with the secrets of her own past, which threaten to envelop and overthrow the life she's made for herself.  But that all sounds frightfully ominous, and you know what, while it is, Perse is our accessible entry point into the halls of power, someone who at the very least is willing to think the obvious questions, to explore outside-he-box solutions, to fight and die to change the world, or change a mind. She is, in sum, a fully realised person, and one who's probably a heck of a lot of fun at parties, and easily underestimated on a firing line. 

There's other characters here too, I just...don't want to spoil too much. We do see a lot more of the Phene this time around, and exploring their culture, in its nuanced horror and joy, is fascinating. And we see a little more of Sun's Republic through the eyes of those a little further down the tree. Without spoilers then: these are, it feels like, real people doing their best within their circumstances, and we can sit alongside them in their lavishly explored inner-lives while they do so. Top-notch characterisation all around. 

By now you know I'm not going to spoil the plot. But. But but but. It's something. It's the sort of story that had me turning pages at 2am to find out what happened next. The sort of story that's seared across your brain for nights afterward. The sort of story that makes you laugh, cry, and then turn the page because you have to know what's next. For those of you here for the combat: it's bloody and brutal and visceral, from the unexpected decompression of atmosphere during the silent, deadly dance of fleet engagements, through the chaos of boarding actions, to the gore and muck of hand to hand fighting planetside. It's unafraid to explore the glory of the fight, but also the horrifying costs, and the waste of it all. There's idols being thrown up here, but the story isn't afraid to explore the sacrifices which they ask for. And as the tale carries on, you can see that whatever happens, Sun's world, Persephone's world, the Republic and the Empire, it's all going to change. 

So is it any good? Absolutely. I tore through this second volume even faster than the first, and need to know what happens next. If you need a space opera in your life, this is a bloody good one. 

Dead Country - Max Gladstone

In short: bloody hell. Meditation on mentorship and family and homecoming and sacrifice and life and death and love and *people* and what they are and do and why. And power and consequences.

Absolute gem of a book, right here.

Now, in more detail: I'm going to open by admitting that I'm a huge fan of Max Gladstone's work. I've talked at length about his standalone urban/portal fantasy, Last Exit, and the sci-fi/romance crossover he co-authored with Amal El-Mohtar, This is How You Lose The Time War, which won alllll the awards back in the pandemic. But it's his Craft Sequence that he's perhaps known for. The series takes place in a world broken by a magical war to overthrow very real gods, one which now blends the fantastical with the institutionally familiar. Lich Kings are more CEO's; those working magic tend to have the skillsets of lawyers or risk management consultants, except they can also bend reality to their whim. The soaring pyramids that once rang with screams of sacrifice now house the elevator chimes of corporately-driven magic. 

It's an ingenious idea. It lets us look at a mirror of our own world, explore it, criticise and understand the systems and complexities that bind us...and do so under the cover of a world rife wityh fantastical elements, from soul-powered golems to fire-throwing mages. It's just that the golems are a police force, the mages are in suits and ties, and the fire-throwing is one part incinerating demons, one part pushing up the corporate stock price. It's some of the most innovative, tightly written worldbuilding I've seen, and it's a lived in, bloody, dangerous world, from the boardroom floor to six feet under. 

An now we have a new story there. And the start of a new series, even, the Craft Wars, which sounds suitably ominous.  It's been a delight, then, to dip into the book and find it like being in a warm (blood temperature?) bath.  The well described, carefully constructed world is still there, still ticking away. And the people in it are as strange and familiar as they ever were.  Fittingly for a new series, we're back with Tara Abernathy. Tara was the protagonist of the first Craft book, a recently graduated apprentice, thrown to her theoretical doom, but too stubborn to die. And she's turned up since, off and on, trying to do the best she can at any given moment, trying to make things right, with the fire and passion and energy that will be familiar to anyone watching the news these days. But Tara is older now, too, and if not wiser, at least more familiar with the world and how it works. And as the story begins, she's going home, back to where everything started, going to see family in a small town that don't know her or like her and may once have tried to burn her as a witch. And so she'll be there, in suit and tie and nice shoes, surrounded by faces old and new, in the depths of family tragedy. A fish out of water story, but with something more going on behind it. Still, it's something, to see the cocksure, stubborn Tara of Three Parts Dead now, becoming something like her own mentor. Trying still to work out who she is, what she wants to do, what she's willing to do in service of larger goals (and isn't that what every villain says?). 

Tara is the heart of the story; sad and often alone and determined and sharp and human. But she's not alone. Her own family are there, and childhood friendships and grudges made manifest. There's threads, complexity spread all around, and you can feel old joys and old wounds laid out quietly in the spaces between words. The folk who live in the backwoods space that Tara once called home are familiar and strange, happy with who and what they are, perhaps (or not), but as proud and flawed and argumentative and terrible and beautiful as any other people. Though Tara's here on big city wings, it's not always her way that's right - or, indeed, her way that's wrong. Both she and those around her need to dig a little deeper, empathise and understand. But of course, they have other problems. Still, the characters, well, you'll remember them all long after you close the book. They're smart, funny, gentle, vicious, troubled, broken, in love, out of love....so many things. But for all that, they are. And the story makes them come alive for us, makes us care about them, about this little town and what happens to it, about Tara and her relationships, and her family. About what might happen next. 

And that's the story, isn't it, what happens next. Because as the pages turn, it's clear that Tara doesn't jsut have a family crisis on her hands. Or a chance to drop in and one-up the local yokels with her big city ways. There's crisis here, fires to be put out before they become something new. Old scores to settle and old cuts to heal, or re-open. I don't want to spoil any of it, because honestly I was spellbound throughout, always looking to see the next turn in the story, watching the stakes go from intimate to epic life-and-death and back again, seamlessly, beautifully. Gladstone can write.  he can give you people to care about, he can give you a beautiful, precision-crafted setting, and he can give you a compelling story that just. Won't. Let. Go. And he does. I don't want to spoil it, but I sat up all night reading it, and I don't regret a moment of it. 

If you enjoy clever, thoughtful, emotionally raw, richly crafted fantasy, then this is a book you can't afford to miss. Much like all his other books, this is some of the best work I've read in years. Go get a copy, right now, and let me know what you think!