The Lesser Devil - Christopher Ruocchio

The Lesser Devil is a standalone novel set in the same universe as the Sun Eater series, whose complex world-building and strong characterisation I’ve spoken about here before, at length. It has occasional appearances by familiar characters, but stands very well on its own.

This tale focuses on Crispin Marlowe. Crispin was, quite literally, born to rule. He’s genetically enhanced to live for centuries. He has super-human reflexes. He’s the son of a man who rules over an entire planet, with all the privilege which that accrues. So Crispin has a lot going for him. But he’s also someone living under a shadow. His father has the iron will and ruthlessness you’d expect from someone with absolute power over the population of a planet, and his older brother left under a cloud decades ago, having fought his way past Crispin to do it. Those things put a pall over the man, as he tries to find his own shape, his own purpose which isn’t defined in the poles of what his father demands that he be, or what his absent brother decided to be instead. Crispin isn’t a small man, but struggles to break free of the constraint nd expectations into which he is bound - or, perhaps, to refine them so that they fit his form rather than the needs of others.

I especially enjoy the relationship Crispin has with his sister, Selene. Crispin is impulsive, maybe a little too quick to anger, striving to surpass the expectations and reputation of his house. A man who can lead from the front, and begins the story with a sense of his own nobility, and an embedded entitlement. Still, the fire in his nature keeps him liable, as does the streak of gentle introspection which you might not expect. Selene, by contrast, is calm, cool, collected, and ruthless. She complements Crispin nicely, and adds a little more calculation as he bulls ahead. They do make an excellent duo, and their cross-talk and dialogue is always both intelligent and entertaining. While the focus is, understandably, on Crispin, I’d be delighted if Selene got stories of her own as well.

Anyway. The Marlowe’s find themselves in something of a scrape, and this gives us an opportunity to explore a slightly smaller scale setting than the sprawling wider universe of the larger series. Much of the story occurs in a wonderfully bucolic village of low-tech individuals, consigned to the back of beyond for their rather outre religious beliefs. The village is charming, and its inhabitants, while part of the plebeian caste of this society, showcase the best of humanity. They have courage, integrity and honour, and are wonderfully forward with the slightly baffled Crispin.The honesty and humanity of the supporting cast of villagers really helps the story shine - we care about them, and their struggles, as they work with the aristocratic Marlow siblings to resolve the hole that they’ve fallen into.

And what a hole it is. I won’t get into it in detail, but there’s a lot going on here. Some fantastically drawn, furiously kinetic fight scenes. Some appalling tragedies and reversals to take the breath away. Technology that makes you feel wonder as much as terror, and draw breath at the grandeur of human ambition. Human courage and sacrifice at its finest.It’s a ot of fun, and Crispin manages to realise something about himself as well, fighting alongside these people he might only have thought of as mayflies, and perhaps has insight into a larger epiphany of the soul.  But, also, and I can’t stress this enough, he kicks arse, and makes it look cool.

This is a great story, off the main path of this series. It adds some nice context for the other books, and they in turn feed into the flavour for this one. As a standalone, it’s a fast-paced, fun, thoughtful and above all entertaining read. Give it a go.

Gideon The Ninth - Tamsyn Muir

I am totally late to the party on Gideon The Ninth. But I’ll join quite a few people in saying that I really enjoyed it. This is a story with far more of a sense of style and sense of fun than you might expect from space lesbian necromancers.

 Because, well, that’s the opener. The dead can be raised, if you need someone to do your fetching and carrying for you, or if you want your enemies brutally murdered for interfering with your nefarious plots.The world of Gideon the Ninth is a world build on bones, on the shattered carcasses of broken worlds, and on the lies people told each other to make it happen. In a sense, it’s a far larger space than our own world - the habitats of various groups are spread throughout a solar system. In another, it’s far smaller. There are nine great houses, each with their own responsibilities - but all of them we see appear to be in a state of slow decline. There aren’t thriving millions here, as much as there are scattered hundreds, clinging to their rocks in the ever-darkening shoals, keeping the candle-flames of their houses alive as the night draws ever closer. There’s an intimacy to it. These people all know each other, or know of each other, in their little bubbles, filled with old grudges and older broken promises.

But opportunity beckons, as a necromancer from each house is summoned, with their bodyguard-companion, to the First House. The invitation is mysterious, its purpose doubly so. But still, these inward looking houses must look out once again, at least at each other. What a gaggle of bone-summoners with varying sociopathic tendencies, and their heavily armed goons, will do to each other in close proximity, in search of power, is anyone’s guess. 

The world...doesn’t live, exactly, but it’s there, a burial wrapping wound around the characters. As Gideon, our protagonist, gets a wider perspective, we pick up alongside them. The atmosphere isn’t exactly funereal, but it’s clearly a system in decay. There are hints that this was a thriving empire once, that there was once more than bones and remnants. Hints of splendour, of soaring ambition, and of terrible bargains made in service of that ambition. The prose is haunting and delicate one minute, unflinchingly robust the next - and in each case, it gives us a real, multi-faceted, fully-formed world. In many instances, that world is melancholy. In others, outright terrifying. But it feels real anyway.

And into that world steps Gideon, of the Ninth House. In a world laced with the tattered remnants of majesty, Gideon is a breath of fresh air. Gideon is  blunt, forceful, and unwilling to take any crap. She’s lived in a mausoleum for her entire life, a life encompassed by bones, by endless rituals of the dead, surrounded by skeletal automatons, and the spiteful venom of the slowly dying gerontocracy of the Ninth House. But Gideon, ah, Gideon is alive. She’s foul mouthed, happier with a sword in her hand than a book, willing to fight dirty, and fiercely vital. It's that energy, that life that makes her sparkle on the page. It helps that she’s willing to fight hard, and her skills are definitely a sight to see. I won’t lie, watching a smart-mouthed, expletive-laden sword-master lend their arm to a cause, and exercise their mind around the mysteries of the First House was always going to be a joy, but Gideon’s sheer energy gets her extra points. That and her relationship with her necromancer - the only other young-ish person in the Ninth House, the greatest necromancer in a house of the dead, and a general pain in Gideon’s arse. Their squabbling, their loathing, their efforts to one-up each other, and to strive together in service of a common goal, is wonderful. It, well, sparks joy. The air crackles with the dialogue, and it keeps your attention - the wit and artistry on display is wonderful, and also, it’s a great deal of fun.

The story, I shan’t spoil. It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma. A story about deciding how far you’re willing to go for an ultimate prize. About deciding who you are, and the sacrifices you’re willing to make. But also a story about Gideon finding herself, finding friendship, finding love, and occasionally kicking arse. There are personal struggles, new friends, and conflicts that range from epically sprawling to deeply individual duels of magic and blade. The central mystery is compelling, and it’ll keep you turning the page time after time after time, wanting to see what happens next, and hoping the story doesn’t have to end. This is a great book, a great start to a series, and one I would totally recommend

Of Mice and Minestrone - Joe R. Lansdale

It’s that time again: when I take a few minutes to stop trying to convince all of you to go and read whichever cool SF&F book is on my desk at the moment, and instead try and convince all of you to read the next Hap & Leonard book. Joe R. Lansdale has been writing these books for quite some time now - I think there’s now something in the area of twenty books, and three seasons of a TV show. The series, centred around the titular old-poor Texan Hap, and his “brother” Leonard, Vietnam veteran, black cowboy extraordinaire, and lover of vanilla cookies, has quite a pedigree. What it also has is a sense of adventure, an ability to show the reader a good time without compromising on the narrative values which it wants to put across, and some concisely but precisely crafted characters who you might not want to meet in a dark alley, but are startlingly human with it.

This collection of short stories, Of Mice and Minestrone, digs into the backstory of the dynamic duo. Leonard, fresh from the army, and Hap, fresh from prison as a conscientious objector, are trying to live their lives - peacefully, quietly, they’ll enjoy it. As usual, though, life has other plans.

One of the things that makes this collection work is the sense of place. The dark, star-filled humidity of east Texas is vividly present in the mind’s eye. Small towns where everyone knows each other, for good or ill, are as much characters as the people who live within them. Those people are wonderful, too - not in themselves, because some of them are properly terrible, but in their humanity. Quiet, backwoods mafia bagmen stand cheek-by-jowl with down on their luck boxers, sullen bartenders and abusive husbands whose every-day evil is grimly palpable. It’s not all bad news, of course. In bars at the back of beyond, or in the quietly domestic family scenes of cooking and connection, there is room to show off the best of humanity. The world is familiar, populated with real people, but has a strangeness to it, delving into a Texas that feels as far in mindset, in time, as it is in geography from now. This is a place showcasing the best and worst of humanity, and we’re embedded in it, appalled by the latter, luxuriating in the former.

Hap and Leonard are the stars, of course, and you can’t fault them for it. The chemistry between the two leads is intense enough to crackle in moments of stress, but comfortable enough that even in this early stage of their lives, they clearly know each other as well as best friends can. They’re just fun, are Hap and Leonard - starting bar fights, taking no crap from small town racists, sitting around having a big bowl of chili. They’re a comfort to all of us, a certainty in uncertain times, that good, or at least goo-ish, can triumph, and that one small corner of the world is the better off for having them in it. These are stories for people who’ve already absorbed the small-town charm of the series, already know that blend of comfortable friendship, refusal to back down to bullies, and the occasional kinetic arse-kicking. But you could dip in as a new reader too, and find them just as entertaining, these tales. Give them a whirl - they’ll make you smile, and take you to a different place, a different time, and show you some of what was terrible and beautiful about it.

(Also, there’s recipes for so much Texan home cooking on here, and it all, yes all, tastes delicious; a great resource on lockdown).

Overall, a fantastic collection, for old hands, and new readers of the series alike. Go out and give it a try, you won’t regret it. 

A Time Of Courage - John Gwynne

So here we are. A Time of Courage.  Conclusion to John Gwynne’s second series set in his Banished Lands universe. As some of you probably remember, I’ve been really excited about Gwynne’s work for years. It has the sort of vivid world building that sucks you into the story, the tightly drawn, human characterisation of protagonists and those that oppose them, and a story that carries that kind of compulsive quality that means reading late into the night is no longer an option as much as it is a necessity.

It’s an absolute pleasure to report that Gwynne has done it again. This is a book which will hit you like an axe to the chest. Each chapter in this journey is filled with revelation, betrayal, bitter defeat, and a wonderful blend of tragic defeat and glorious victory.  Characters - no, people - that you’ve come to feel for, and care about over three books, or six, may finally get what they deserve - one way or the other. The gloves, I am not kidding, are off. This is a crescendo brought to life in the people of this world, in their loves and lives and feuds, fears and victories.

It’s genuinely difficult to talk about the final book in a series without spoilers, but I’m guessing you can tell I really enjoyed it. So a word on logistics: If you’re coming into the third book in the series - yes, this does appear to be the final part of the sequence right now. No, you don’t need to have read both series in this universe in order to appreciate this one. Yes, you should read the other two books in this series, at least, before you come to this one. Or start with the first series anyway.

For those of you that are already here, already invested. Yes. The world is still glorious. The towers of giant-built citadels still scrape the skies. Vile revenants stalk the land in cloaks of mist and violence. Speaking personally, they make my skin crawl, the prose keeping my attention with the grim intensity of razor teeth at the throat. Ancient servants of an ancient creator continue an endless feud, regarding humanity as mildly-helpful idiots at best, chattel and food at worst. But the people soar in that world. The heroes have a fire in them that you can see pouring off the page. They have the flaws and struggles and scars that make us human, for sure. But beneath those is a core of humanity, of decency which makes them  And the antagonists range from the alien, thrillingly malevolent and inscrutably inhuman, to the prosaic; Gwynne’s talent at making atrocious people who are still the heroes of their own story, and for whose journey you can empathise without sympathising, is considerable. Both sides of the coin have emotional heft, and will make you care.

Which is just as well, because the world is ending. The plot is a snappy one, driving up into a rolling boil that left me gasping between chapters. It delivers, one page at a time. Again, no spoilers, but this is an ending that these characters deserve - glorious and real and true. The battles are visceral and bloody, shields slamming together with a force that cracks stars, arrows thrumming through the air with a grace that ends in blood. You won’t be able to look away, and you may not want to. But it works because of the people, because we believe in them, in the world they live in, we believe that they matter.

Truth and Courage are the watchwords, and they’re on display here from the first page to the last. This is a fantastic and fierce work of fantasy, and a marvellous ending to a great series. If you’re wondering if it’s worth seeing through to the end, let me assure you now, the answer is yes.

Firewalkers - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Firewalkers is a stand alone sci-fi novella from Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky has written some of the most fascinating and imaginative stories I’ve read in the last few years, and that trend has continued here.

This is a story of an Earth which is slowly becoming less and less habitable. The equator is becoming a desert, the heat of the sun during the day no longer survivable. People are migrating north and south, toward the coasts, toward lives of desperation, armed compounds, and survival. Well, most people are. For the super-rich, for those with the will and the resources, there’s another option. The rich have their own starships. These are being built, in theory, to save some remnant of humanity from climate catastrophe. Practically, they’re the playground of oligarchs, accessible only by space elevators scattered across the equator. Nobody goes up without an invitation, and while a lot fo resources go up the elevators, not a lot comes back down again.

Around the elevators, the gates to an unseen world of privilege, towns have sprawled, dedicated to fulfilling the needs of those who haven’t yet made their way up the elevator. People are crammed cheek-by-jowl, searching for patches of shade in the day, eyeing the slow disintegration of their society and their dignity each night, as the desert gets closer, and hotter, and the number of jobs goes down.

It’s a harsh world, yes, but there are wonders. The ships themselves are fantastic, of course, but there are other things out in the deep desert, where those now up the elevator spent their youth in secret research labs, building the technologies that would save them. There are rumours of botched biological experiments, of stashes of forgotten riches, of rogue computers taking over facilities, of research vaults that could make you rich, if you could find them. And the infrastructure, the power which ran those labs, now runs the cut down shanty towns around the elevator whisking the privileged away.

That’s where the Firewalkers come in. Sometimes, things break. Or things need retrieving from the deep desert, no questions asked. Firewalkers will drive days through killing sun, into unmapped geography, and face the monsters - for a price.

Our crew is Mao, and Lupé, and Hotep. The muscle, the mechanic, the tech wizard, teenagers taking a horrifying risk for the promise of just a little more money, just a little more medicine, just a little more hope. The story stands by Mao, a boy growing into a man, deciding who he’s going to be, and whether he’s ready to keep taking risks, keep walking into the fire. It’s a wonderful portrayal of someone fumbling for answers, driven by their confidence and confusion, struggling to keep making things right. The two women, Lupé, and Hotep are wonderfully realised themselves. Hotep is damaged, cutting, and surprisingly fragile, wrapped in bandages both concrete and metaphorical, trying to live out a life wrapped in rage and hurt and betrayal. Lupé is pragmatic, generally more phlegmatic, with moments of fire and a sense of the burden of responsibility. The three of them are chaos, a team working well together, with an abiding friendship disguised under an atmosphere of mercantilism. You can see them all, out there in the broken-down dustrunner that they use to hurl themselves into the teeth of danger, striding through the ruins and secrets of a shattered world, risking their lives, but not heroes - just people, with all the fragility, the hard edges and quiet looks that make them feel real.

And they’re on an adventure, for sure. I won’t spoil it, but there’s so much cool stuff here. The climate crisis and the concentration of wealth in the hands of an elite are front and centre here, explored with a precision and passion which makes for searing, unforgettable reading. It’s linked to some fabulous characterisation, and more personal stories, which help shape their world. Of course, if you’re here for the delving into shattered datavaults looking for remnants of a world long gone, whilst dodging sec-bots and horrifying abandoned experiments, it’s here too. This is a great story; it has a lot to say, and wraps its larger themes in a compelling narrative that kept me reading all night, even as I didn’t want it to end.

This is great stuff, and you really should read it. 

Shorefall - Robert Jackson Bennett

Shorefall is the second novel in Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founders series. I absolutely adored its predecessor, Foundryside, and so went into this one with pretty high expectations. In good news, those expectations were more than met. Bennett has played a blinder; Shorefall was absolutely dazzling, a book that I’ve spent a large part of a week in lockdown thinking and talking about. It has the audacity to ask interesting questions with vast scope, like: who are we? What are we willing to do to right wrongs? How do we justify what we do to ourselves, as a society and individually? . The story takes those questions and wraps them up in compelling characters and a world lavish in its detail.

Basically, if you want the short version, I think this is a fantastic book, an absolute cracker of a sequel, and that you should get hold of a copy and read it as soon as possible.

After the events of the last book, things have settled down a bit for Sancia and her team of ne’er-do-well guerilla scrivers. They’re sitting pretty outside the walled compounds of the scriving merchant houses, figuring out how to disrupt the status quo. Scriving certain sigils onto machinery has magical effects, you see - convincing reality to work in ways different to the ones we’re used to. What could you do if writing on the wheels of a cart convinced it that gravity didn’t apply, or that flat ground was actually a slope? Scrivers ask these questions, echoing (for me) the systems of information technology in our own world. Here, though, most scriving knowledge was kept under lock and key by the massively wealthy and their teams of scrivers, living in walled off luxury while everyone on the other side of the walls scrabble to survive.

Sancia and her team are here to change that, offering their own designs for review for free -  as long as those reviewing them are willing to add their own designs to those available for review. It’s open source, but with grimoires, and their initial struggles to change the paradigm of their society are fascinating in themselves. There’s a heist, chases, and some very tense moments near a steam pipe. It’s a page turner, for sure. And the world is as wonderful as it was previously. The lavishly decorated campos compounds, filled with scions of educated privilege, and the sneering sons of a monied elite, are as wonderful and terrible as ever. The shattered remains of The Mountain, the huge complex now inhabited only by the ghost of a semi-conscious magical AI is grand and appalling in equal measure, the grandeur somehow heightened by its now also being a shattered ruin. Questions of autonomy and sovereignty are here too - as slaves escaped from the island plantations which drive the wealth of the city begin to surface in the land around the campos. There’s a distinct whiff of politics in the air, and  some complex double dealings kicking off in the first few pages.

But there’s something else as well. I won’t dig into it for fear of spoilers, but will say this; it’s a problem which can reshape the world, for better or worse. Whether Sancia and  her gang can stop it is another matter, as is whether they want to. But big changes are coming to the world, one way or another, and the story makes sure that Sancia and her people know the costs of their choices, and that every decision they make will have consequences. It’s a wonderful thing, this story that lays out difficult moral choices for its protagonist, plays on her need for agency, for freedom, and juxtaposes that need with survival, or with deciding to do the “right” thing.

 This is a story unafraid to ask its characters difficult questions. The antagonists are smart, focused people, and in other books they might have been heroes. They’re certainly assured of the need to realise their own goals, and unflinching of their cost, to everyone else and to themselves. They’re wonderfully complicated people in their own right - broken and reforged, perhaps. Making terrible choices, possibly. But convincing, and consistent. You can feel for them even while desperately hoping Sancia and her team thwart them, or find a way out of the situations they find themselves in.

Speaking of Sancia, I just want to add how much I loved seeing her grow here. Both with her friends, and in her relationship. Reaching out and finding solace and love where she can has always been difficult for Sancia; trust and intimacy are things that tend to happen to other people. But here, she’s growing, reaching out to others, wrapping herself in the armour of their love, affection and loyalty, willing to take risks to help them get through another day alive, willing to trust and to believe - even as she is put through the wringer of tough choices. The emotional connections here are raw and genuine, and they have a kick like a mule. The struggles and trials here have an authenticity to them which had me at the edge of tears at times, and laughing far too hard at others. The relationships work, and they feel real. The characters, with all their pain and joy, are people you share the page with, and are wonderfully realised.

In the end, we’re back to the short version: this is a fantastic book. Buy it now, read it now. You won’t regret it.

Gaunt's Ghosts: The Founding - Dan Abnett

Gaunt’s Ghosts is one of the flagship series of the Warhammer 40,000 novel-verse. There’s fifteen or so of them now, chronicling the adventures of the titular Ghosts, a regiment of guardsmen, regular humans, trying to make their way in a universe filled with demons, super-human cyborg warriors, psychotic orcs, condescending, murderous space-elves and all sorts of other creatures with attitudes that range from grudging tolerance to apocalyptic hostility. Into this mix step a gang of soldiers with very little in the way of armour, armaments, or chances for survival. They’re the Imperial Guard, humanity’s first line of defence against all the horrors of a hostile galaxy - and they tend to be led by people who see guardsmen as fungible assets, to be thrown at the enemy until they overwhelm by sheer force of numbers, stepping over piles of their comrades on the way.

Not so the commander of the Ghosts. Gaunt is a blend of political and military, a colonel of a regiment, but also a Commisar, a political officer whose job is to ensure loyalty to the undying God-Emperor who sits at the centre of humanity’s empire in this grim-dark future. Stereotypically, Commissar's do this by shooting a few of their more recalcitrant men in the head, but Gaunt, at least, seems unwilling to waste lives, and seems reluctant to kill his own men. This omnibus edition of the first three books in the series shows us Gaunt at various points: in childhood, in training as a Commissar, as part of another regiment, whilst raising the Ghosts as a regiment, and in the aftermath, as they and he work together to, if not save the universe at ;east try to prevent it getting any worse. And from this we see Gaunt grow. He’s clever, and focused, and driven, and has a surprisingly dense core of morality at his heart. This is a man who appreciates loyalty, and truth, and has a genuine conviction in the divinity of his Emperor, and in the necessity of the Guard to help keep humanity safe. But Gaunt is also ruthless, when he needs to be, willing to make sacrifices in order to achieve his goals (though unwilling to make the same sacrifices if they’re meaningless). There’s a growing hard-edge to Gaunt, a willingness to do what he feels needs to be done over the years, as tragedy takes friends and colleagues. But at the same time, there’s a heart, a willingness to stand by his men, to take risks with them, to do his best to keep them alive, even as they all walk into the cannon-fire together. The blend of compassion, ruthlessness, personal courage, tactical acumen, loyalty and a razor-sharp intelligence help embody Gaunt, and the complexity of his character is at the heart of what makes these stories so readable.

It’s not all about Gaunt, of course. This omnibus includes a variety of short stories from Ghost engagements on multiple worlds, and uses that as a framing device, showing us the perspective of different key personnel in the Ghosts. From the gentle Trooper Bragg, whose inability to hit anything with a weapon gave him both the sobriquet “Try Again” and a penchant for carrying around massively heavy weapons, to the slitheringly lethal Major Rawn, willing to stab you in the back and the front simultaneously ands powered by an engine of internal fury, to Colonel Corbec, hearty, bluff and well aware of his role as Gaunt;s counterpart, the Ghosts all have their own personalities; they aren’t all just faceless numbers, but given to us as individuals with their own backstories, needs and desires. That helps us care about them and the stakes they’re working for on the page, and we can feel more as they live and die around us, on battlefields filled with horrors and heroism in equal measure. My only complaint would be the lack of women in the Ghosts, though this looks like it could be resolved in later volumes.

The stories themselves? Well, this is Warhammer 40,000. The baddies tend to be, really, pretty bad. Here we see ravening cultists, corrupt aristocracies, warped creatures that used to be men, daemonic machinery, and all sorts of other nastiness. There’s less grey here than you might expect, at least initially; though Gaunt and his Ghosts aren’t always the best of people (and the Ghosts are driven by the tragedy of being the last survivors of their world), they are pretty much always better than the enemies they face in this volume. For example, Rawne’s scheming and black marketeering seem pedestrian in the face of literal teleporting demons that can rip you limb from limb, or quiet, whispering horrors that slowly turn men mad. And it’s all wonderfully described, in prose that carries the screams of battle and the punch of laser fire in its wake, telling us tales without a wasted word, whilst also managing to describe this horror of a gothic nightmare future with every necessary detail to make it feel intensely alive, a lived-in space that is real, from the gothic-cathedral ships plying the space lanes, to the charnel-house of a billions strong hive-city under siege. The universe is real here; you can step through the page, and follow the crump of artillery shells and the sound of crisp-commands soaked in blood, to stand beside Gaunt and his Ghosts at the edge of the world, saving a humanity which will never know or care about the sacrifices that they’ve made.

Overall, I’d say this is a very well done piece of military science-fiction, which benefits from being wrapped into the dense lore of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It avoids glorifying the conflicts the Guard take part in, and lets us see them as humanity doing its best to survive, to do the right thing, and to make things better. In a world populated by larger-than life aliens, and super-human Space Marines, the genuine humanity of Gaunt and the Ghosts is refreshing, and their trials and tribulations are the more compelling because of it. I was gripped from the first page, and if you’re looking for some good military sci-fi, an entry point into the 40k world, or both, I’d say this would be a great place to start.