Isoka is our protagonist, and Isoka is a killer. She’s young, but she grew up with nothing, and she’s determined to make something for herself, and for her younger sister. And Isoka does that, at least at the start of the tale, by being a ward boss for her city’s organised crime syndicate. She’s ruthless, focused, and disinclined to think of people outside of their benefit as leverage.Except for the aforementioned sister, who doesn’t know that her sister uses extortion, blackmail and more than a soupcon of violence to keep her in a decent lifestyle. Isoka gets to do this because she is, ha, magical. The kind of magic that lets you spring crackling blades out of your hands with a thought, or shield yourself with eldritch armour. Always a convenient thing for someone who needs to break a few heads. Unfortunately for Isoka, being an unregistered magic user is quite, quite criminal - and being a registered magic user probably wouldn’t end well for her, assuming she wasn’t executed on the spot. So she has to keep her magical light under a bushel. This makes for an interesting tension, as she works to resolve issues with the minimum amount of fuss, but has a penchant to shift quickly into a tide of lethal violence when things don’t go the way she’d prefer. Isoka is smart, funny, and, over the course of the story, begins to shift away from being quite such a utilitarian personality. But you can see where she’s coming from, and empathise, if not sympathise, with her in the many odd situations that she ends up in.
Speaking of situations - Isoka, for her many and varied sins, finds herself exiled to the magical ship Soliton, a mysterious ancient wreck that appears at various city ports, accepting a tithe of magical youth. It’s also huge, and presumably very powerful, and Isoka’s city government would rather like to take hold of it, so they can use it to, you know, conquer the world. The world…well, the world is largely the city and the ship, for the purposes of this book. We do get some quiet hints as to the nature of other places when we meet ancillary players and hear some of their background, but much of the wider space is names and traits. That doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting - I’d definitely like to hear more. But the ship. Oh, that, Wexler describes perfectly. A towering edifice, filled with mysterious systems which are, in partial decay, swarmed by semi-aquatic monsters which serve as food source and threat all at once, run by a council of ne-er-do-well youth with the power to move faster than thought or incinerate their enemies with a ball of fire. It’s a complex, living breathing place, and every level of it that we move into feels different, differently dangerous, differently wonderful. The Soliton is something special beneath all the rust and wrack and ruin and…monsters, but quite what that is, remains rather open to question. Still, it’s a grounded, physical sort of place, and the visceral violence of monster hunts and duels serves as a backstop on how much like civilisation it is not.
The story…well, we won’t spoil that. But Isoka, stuck on a boat from hell, due to crimes she absolutely did commit, has to think fast in order to build herself a power base, build herself a life, and avoid getting eaten by monstrous crabs. And she may even manage to find love along the way, or something like it. And it’s an adventure; much like Treasure Island, Isoka is always managing to get herself into and mostly out of trouble, struggling to build alliances with unworthy associates, and a friendship or two, which may or may not be something real. This is fast paced fantasy, always with a hook to get you to the next page, never lettoing go - and it’s fun. I’d say if you’re on the lookout for a new series, this one is worth a try.
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