More on Friday

 We’ve got something special this week - a review of C.L. Clark’s hotly awaited (and amazing) The Unbroken. Look out for it on Friday, it’s worth the wait, I promise! (And the tl;dr is, go buy it, right now!).

Behind The Throne - K.B. Wagers

Behind The Throne is a fun book. 

I just wanted to get that out of the way, because it has a heck of a lot going on. There’s some sterling character work. There’s a world that slowly pans out from an initial tight focus to a sprawling, interplanetary scale. And there’s a story which blends byzantine politics, mystery, and heart-stopping action into a delicious narrative gumbo. The tl;dr is that it’s a cracking start to a series, and well worth a look.

The longer version of the story, starts with Hail. Hail is a gunrunner. Hail has a willingness to punch people who give her crap, and Hail has a streak of daring, and a wider streak of contrariness that make her a delight at parties. Unfortunately for Hail, she’s also on the run from a life she never wanted, and constraints she never needed.And that family runs an Empire. And has security teams that are very, very good at their jobs. Now the black sheep of the family is going to come home, whether she wants to or not.

Say what you will though, Hail is a lot of fun to follow around. Assuming you like people with a line in smart banter, that is. Or people not afraid to break out a can of whup-ass when they need it. And Hail backs those things with a gently simmering mixture of pride, familial affection, and long-buried responsibility. As an aside, whilst all of those things are fine, and they make the text a genuine pleasure to read, I want to take a moment and appreciate the way that Hail is also a portrait of grief. Dragged home because her family is under attack, she deals with deaths in a way that cloaks the rawness of her emotions in a facade of work, politics and occasional firefights. But the emotion, the essential humanity, is still there. 

And the world. Ahhh, this is something. We’re swiftly embedded in conspiracies and palace politics, and the marble halls of a palace have an austere beauty that contrasts wonderfully with the more gritty mood of Hail. Then there’s the sense of a broader universe - hints of gangster havens. Civic squares filled with celebrations. An Empire which spans star systems, and aliens and other polities out beyond their writ. It’s a space filled with life and energy.It’s a universe, not just a backdrop, and one which is carrying its own history, and sense that something else is out there. 

That said, we tend to focus on the palace, the politics, and the urban environs thereof; and those have a realism, and if not a grit, a kind of gently used patina that makes then feel like real places, human places. These aren’t start spaces filled with ideas, but living textures, filled with people going about their day. That for some of them, their day is figuring out a series of murders, or plotting to keep or overthrow a throne, or just trying to get home and see their kids. ..well, it’s all wrapping life and humanity around the characters. 

I talked about Hail, but she’s surrounded by a cast of, if not thousands, more than a few. And one of the wonderful things about this book is their relationships With Hail, as the protagonist of course but with each other. Old wounds are dug up, new friendships made.A particular shout out to a sensitive portrayal of queer relationships, which were also a spot on look at long term partners and their foibles, and the deep affection they have for each other. In any event, Hail is the protagonist, and fills every page she’s on, but there are quieter, delightful moments stashed away too, from families to couples, from banter to cold silence. In all those case,s these are people that feel like people. 

In the end, as I say, this is a fun book. It gives us believable characters, with relationships that you can care about, in a convincing, vivid sci-fi world, with a story filled with backstabbing, politics, buccaneering, grandstanding, and general  adventure. 

It is, again, a fun book. Go give it a read!

Recluce Tales: Stories from the World of Recluce - L.E. Modesitt Jr.

 

Recluce Tales: Stories from the World of Recluce is a selection of short fiction from L.E. Modesitt Jr, set in his long running Recluce universe. The stories fill in gaps in the chronology between the published novels, and focus either on side-characters from those stories, or entirely new perspectives. The short version is that these tales add context and texture to the larger tapestry; though they do stand on their own, they also benefit from a knowledge of the existing series. 

So, why would you read this? Well, I’ll start with this. There’s a tale here from the very start of the world of Recluce. A world settled by people from outside, from other dimensions, other quantum strands, whose ships have been shifted into this space, whose technology is slowly failing, who have no choice but to set themselves at the task of building a new society. But detail on that first group of settlers, those who founded an Empire, whose antecedents ruled, large sections of the world as Cyador...detail on those people has been extremely sparse. A historical artifact here. An ancient “chaos tower” there, still creakingly humming with old science, no longer replicable, in deep decay. But nothing tangible. The first story in this collection, The Vice Marshal’s Trial, changes that for us. From internal monologue, from snatches of half heard discussion and asides, we draw ourselves a portrait of a people in crisis, a divided leadership, and a sense of poignant loss. And at the same time, there’s a story here. Not a gentle one, perhaps, but inexorable, the story of a person stepping onto an unfamiliar path, trying to be as much themselves as they can and survive. Modesitt has always excelled at giving Recluce a human face, and in showing that what may seem like good and evil, or diametrically opposed sides, are, well, people. Flawed and struggling in the structures of their time.

So it is with the first story in this collection, and so it is with the rest. They show off hidden corners. They tell us what happened to the forgotten characters, or the trailing ends of different stories. Even while the mainline books were giving us a larger story, these vignettes are more intimate in their brevity, and show that other stories are, perhaps, just as important. At least ot the people living them. Slices of life from every era of Recluce are here - from the Rational Stars, to the end of Cyador, to the rise of Recluce, and the end of the balance. Perhaps a handful of pages, perhaps a little more, flashes of life and love and tragedy intertwined, giving us stories that show us what happens outside the spotlight, and that there’s still truth to be found there.

I think you could read these without knowing the world of Recluce. They have Modesitt’s perfectly honed prose, which builds the prosaic into the numinous. They have the characters who feel whole, even in these flashes of their lives. And it has enough of Recluce, of the world of Candar, to feel real, feel whole. And from this you’ll find stories which can bring out tears and laughter, right enough. Though they may feel a little lacking. But if you come to it with that longer history in mind, you’ll know their contents and shapes - what has or will happen. And that can make both these new stories and those already told take different shapes - a joy indeed.

This is an interesting collection, and one that I think a first time reader could dip into in order to get a feel for the Recluce series, and Modesitt’s style of writing. But it’s also something for those who want to delve into these offcut gems, which will make the mainline tales shine all the brighter. 

Off this week!

A minor medical drama has delayed posting for this week's review. 

We'll be back next week!

The Conductors - Nicole Glover

The Conductors is the debut fantasy novel from Nicole Glover. In a world one step away from ours, magic is real. But the atrocities of humanity are still just as real. The American civil war still happened, and so did the emancipation of the slaves. But some of those slaves were wielders of a celestial magic, a scattered remnant of their own truths; and some of their owners were sorcerors, driving direct and brutal change through sheer focused power. Escapees made their way to freedom on the underground railroad, shepherded from safehouse to safehouse in slave-owner territory by Conductors, who took their lives into their hands on every journey. But now, the war is over, and the slaves are free. At least nominally; as a people and a collective, they still carry the scars of their experience, in a nation which still isn’t sure it wants anything to do with them. And in one small corner of that already fraught world, someone is murdering those who escaped from slavery - and horrors carved on their flesh.

Hetty is our window on this world, this delicately blended melange of the strange and the familiar. Hetty was a Conductor, someone who dove into and out of slave owning territory to rescue people from bondage. And she was rather good at it. Pragmatic, occasionally ruthless, with a good heart and willingness to do what she had to in order to save lives, Hetty stands as someone with a strong moral core, and the skills to do something about injustice. Part of that core may be driven by her own escape from slavery, fleeing with her sister into the wilderness; the cost of that freedom was losing track of her sibling. Hetty now is washed up on the shores of a world with less use for the Conductors, a world where liberty has given way to civic responsibility, and heroics to the day-to-day grind of paying the rent. But Hetty is a woman with purpose, investigating things which don’t make sense - finding the lost, and tracking down murderers for a community which the larger establishment has, at best, no interest in. 

I’ve got a lot of time for Hetty. We talk about strong female leads a lot, and she is that, but she’s also a fully realised individual, fighting for agency, with her own wants and needs, her own fears and dislikes, her own relationships - with her landlord, with those she helped to freedom all those years ago, with preachers and weavers and doctors and, well, her husband. I have to shout out ot that relationship, incidentally, because it’s a joy to read - a pair who worked together for years, living together because they don’t have another way to be, comfortable around each other, and stepping lightly around the idea of eros. Adults in the prime of life, deciding what their relationship is, as comfortable with each other as a pair of well-worn shoes. It’s refreshing!

Anyway, Hetty investigates a series of gruesome murders, partly because nobody else will. Nobody else, in fact, seems to care.  The world that we have here carries the authentic stain of discrinmination throughout, seeping into every interaction like a bloody ink. You can hear the crack of war-torn gunfire in the recent, unforgotten past. And the silent, sideways glances that keep “certain people” in certain areas of the city speak volumes. This is a story of oppression and power, and the consequences when one has been led by the other. But it’s also a story about community, the strength of friendship and the way those let us be more than we are; as Hetty dives into death, she finds assistance from old friends, and the warmth and energy and love that comes from those connections gives the hear tot this story, make sit something real and vital. In a civic society that wants nothing to do with ex-slaves and other people of colour, these families built of experience and connection give some truth and weight and joy. 

In the end, this is one part mystery story, one part period drama, one part explosive magic adventure, and all of those are great fun. Hetty is a fantastic, no-nonsense protagonist, and I really would like to see more of her adventures.

This one’s worth a look!

The Black Coast - Mike Brooks

The Black Coast is the start of a new fantasy series from Mike Brooks, whose sci-fi work I’ve previously enjoyed.This is something of a departure, though. Fewer sarcastic found family spaceship crews, more terrifying, dragon riding knights, Viking-esque warriors and imperial politics-by-assassination. 

Some things have remained the same though. The complex weave of detailed, lovingly constructed worldbuilding. The rock solid characterisation, which makes the characters seem like, well, people. And the story, which grabs hold of you and won’t let go until it’s done - in my case, leaving me turning pages at 2AM when I should’ve been asleep instead. 

The world is a sprawling one, filled with different, fascinating cultures. Perhaps the most familiar seeming is a feudal hierarchy, dominated by “Sars”, armoured knights  who dominate and protect their local polity with  martial prowess, and whose behaviours are theoretically circumscribed by an elaborate honour code. We catch some of the different rungs of their society - the aristocratic rulers, of course, but the reeve and the guardsmen and the master of hounds are all here, along with field workers - each with a set position in society. That said, that society is also surprisingly socially egalitarian. People may be defined by their rank, but who they choose to love, for example, is entirely in their own remit. And while the Sars seek to define themselves by the code of honour, it’s possible that their personal honour and the code may conflict, or that there may be interpretations that are more controversial than others. And they live under the aegis of a religion devoted to a God-King, whose demise generations before was followed by prophecies of his return. That faith is explored in some detail, and provides valuable context and depth to the characters

Oh, and the Sars, er, ride dragons into battle. Well, they seemed more like dinosaurs to me, lumbering, armoured behemoths that could crush individuals underneath them, or lash out with a tail and shatter a shield wall. But, yes, armoured men riding dragons. It’s just cool. 

A cultural opponent of the Sars, are those they call Raiders. Those raiders are from a space where arable land seems to be relatively scarce. Where the climate is a lot colder. And with a tradition of taking to the seas, under the unforgiving eye of an uncaring god. The raiders have their own magic, and their own problems - from intra-clan infighting to demons walking the earth in the bodies of the dead. If they don’t have the armour of the Sars, they have a society which calls for each individual to be martially competent. And that society feels far more egalitarian in terms of rank - chiefdoms aren’t hereditary, and each individual has far less of a deferential attitude to their leaders. On the other hand, they seem far more socially restrictive than the lands of the Sars, a study in similarities and contrasts. 

And then there’s lands outside the control of the God King, a sprawling mercantile empire filled with the energy of trade. It also hides claimants to the throne of the God-King, a savvy political move which is one of the central threads of the text, as the God-King’s descendants would rather that there weren’t any competing branches of the family tree. This is a space which seems to contain both staggering, opulent luxury and brutal, uncaring poverty, where authority is backed by money, or by brutal violence. It’s a land where people are thriving, but also one where it’s very easy to fall. 

In any case, as you can see, it’s a diverse world, packed with histories and details and, well, fun. 

Onto the boards step our players; a leader of Sars, a leader of Raiders, and, in the background, a political mastermind, and those she’s hunting. 

The heart of the story, to me, is the relationship between the leaders of the Sars and the Raiders, Daimon Blackcreek and Saana Sattistutar. Thrown together as the heads of a joined community by happenstance, they’re struggling to make things work. To do that, they need to fight not only the prejudices and histories of their communities, but also their own personal biases. The people of the coast see the raiders as bloodthirsty savages, and the raiders see the people of the Sars as weirdly deferential, sources of wealth and renown. Neither group really feels like the other is, well, anything but an Other. That hurts them, as the story begins, and part of the narrative journey is watching those communities close ranks around each other, rather than against each other. Credit for that can go to Saana, whose brusque, no-nonsense style is a joy. She’s an experienced warrior, a chief who led her clan in escaping a dark and brutal danger at home, throwing them across the sea to an uncertain fate. And yet, even as she takes the greatest leap her people know, still Saana struggles ot understand Daimin and his people. What makes them so tolerant of things she finds repugnant, and what makes them react so strangely to basic common practises? I say struggles, I think something the book does well is portray Saana’s struggle with this. She knows that they have one chance to get the community to work together, to see each other as people, and if she (and indeed, Daimin) react poorly sometimes, they’re trying ot learn from each other as much as they can, trying to look past their own minds and into the eyes of a stranger. Saana’s a joy to read, especially when she is just done taking everyone’s crap. But a shout out too, to her relationship with her daughter, which has a complexity, a layered depth to it which speaks to an unheard history, whispered in the margins, and helps shape both of them on the page into more rounded people.

I also have a small delight for her interaction with the clan herbalist, but I’ll leave you to find that one out yourselves.

Daimon is younger, perhaps more impulsive, and driven to do the right thing. Maybe not the right thing by the code he lives for, but the right thing by the people he is sworn to protect. That there can be differences between the two is, itself, interesting.  Still, he’s a man growing up fast, facing Raider axes of obsidian with hard steel and the help of a rampaging dinosaur. But his real bravery is in recognising what needs to be done, in thinking rather than opening his mouth immediately, in recognising his limitations, and strengths, and trying to do the right thing.  They’re both good people, trying to herd a swarm of cats who are on the razors edge between just having a cuddle, and throwing down in a mix of bloody fur. Also, the cats are people, and are heavily armed with generational grudges. But  if there are shades of grey here, they’re only as much as regular people, trying their best; not as grimdark as all that, and ot paladins, no, but real, grubby people, trying their best to stand up, be better than they are, and lift their people up with them. Watching the two clash and learn and clash again, and argue and scrabble toward an understanding is, really, a wonder - and it helps show that we are, in fact, better together. 

There’s some equally interesting stuff happening with Tila, the God King’s sister, who is delightfully ruthless, pragmatic, and frustrated by the demands of a society which keep her from a throne that even her brother, sat upon it, thinks she would be better suited for. Tila is concerned for her family, and for her Empire, and won’t brook threats to the unity and survival of either - which is probably all I can say without spoiling things. I will add that we also get a viewpoint from Jeya, an orphan, whose own ruthlessness is rather more small scale, and whose compassion is, perhaps, rather more immediate. Jeya is young, but has had the soft edges knocked off of her by a hard life on the street - quite what she’ll do with an opportunity ro two which fall in her lap, is an open question. 

In any case, each of these characters comes with their own drive, their own agenda, their own wants and needs, their own personality, voice and agency. In sum, they’re convincing as people, and you want to see them succeed - even when they’re not at all on the same page!

Speaking of which, the plot is an absolute firecracker. There’s multiple threads, as each of the viewpoint characters tries to push forward with their goals, and runs afoul of the others. But each thread is compelling in itself. I must admit to a preference for the scenes between Saana and Daimon, but it all works.. There’s the quiet, intimate moments here, and some flashes of genuine sorrow and joy, which may make you well up, or cheer along with our protagonists. There’s blood on the ground at scales ranging from close-in street fights to rampaging-dinosaur-bloodbath. There’s magic, quiet and flashy, and a sense of strangeness and wonder. And there’s that hook, that need to see what our heroes do next, which catches at you and drags you along, until, like me, you’re still reading at 2AM, because you want to know how it ends, and don’t want it to end. 

This one is great, folks. Give it a read.

Network Effect - Martha Wells

 So. Murderbot. What’s Murderbot? Well, Murderbot is a lot of things. The most obvious is that it’s a sci-fi series by Martha Wells, mostly of linked novella length stories, and now, with Network Effect, a full length novel. Murderbot is also the story of the eponymous individual, a one-time corporate enforcer bot, whose ability to break its governor programming after a seeming eternity of servitude to a variety of worthless corporate dingbats has essentially left it with the desire to do as little as possible. Exhausted floor workers will no doubt empathise strongly. Murderbot is a story about difference, and how we can be Ok with difference, and celebrate it. About how we can be excellent to each other, and ourselves, and don’t, you know, have to be worthless corporate dingbats. It’s a story about one person finding that other people can appreciate it for who it is, and that not everyone is terrible, but also a story which gives room to the difference and the feelings of everyone involved. Murderbot has no desire to be human. It doesn’t really like humans, a lot of the time - squishy, messy, annoying creatures that they are. But Murderbot will enter a fire for those it wishes to protect, and is constantly surprised when others do the same. So yeah, Murderbot. It’s not a robot becoming human, or a cyborg finding its heart, but a person reaching out for connection, and also being comfortable, or finding themselves trying to be comfortable in who they are.

Also that person can shoot lasers from their wrists and take down an infantry platoon without breaking a sweat. Because the series is  titled Murderbot, what did you expect.

Murderbot is our window into the world it inhabits, and given that, it’s an absolute joy to hear it still have such a strong voice. Murderbot is wry, occasionally bleak, and makes comments with a degree of incisive sarcasm that is at once revelatory and hilarious. The same could be said of the world, which is one largely settled by enormous corporate interests, for whom people are a distant second to profit. Oppression is structural and embedded. Around the edges of the corporate-sphere, where life is cheap and ex[ectations minimal are other polities, with rather more prgoressive ideals - but their influence inside the domain of corporate interests is limited. 

Murderbot, however, is free of its old corporate masters. Now it has its own agency, its own personality, its own individuality, something it protects fiercely.But it does so with the world weary exhaustion of a life long retail worker, whose retail experience just happens to involve blowing up assassins, hostile drones, and occasional live malware.  I think Murderbot would be insulted if I said that it felt like it was human, in its quirks and needs, its grumps and its simmering affections - but perhaps less offended if I said it seems like a person. In any event, Murderbot has a voice you can feel resonating through your heart, through your bones. It is tired, and utterly unwilling to take any more crap. In 2021, Murderbots brand of tired, world weary, cynical and selfish altruism mixed with high explosives, well, that’s a beacon to us all. 

Murderbot is the heart of this story, in its affections for the friends it has chosen to make, both literally and figuratively. In its refusal to lay down, in its determination to be counted, and also in its pressing need to just go and binge a TV series uninterrupted for a while, if people would just stop getting into trouble. 

And wow, in Network Effect, the first standalone Murderbot novel, do people manage to get in trouble. Yes. The answer is yes. There’s all sorts going on here. Kidnapping. Potential alien incursions. Archaeology, Corporate defenestration. Missile strikes. Combat malware. The space battles are a fast paced, lethal ballet, and the moments when Murderbot lets itself go against targets are kinetic and brutal, with a rhythm and energy that lends itself to impacts that you can feel coming off the page and right into your sternum. 

Network Effect is an adventure story, a story of someone who is unwilling to take any crap, and is willing to do a lot to protect their own agency and the lives of the people they may occasionally admit to themselves that they care about. It’s a high concept sci-fi story, in a well realised, innovative universe, filled with humanity at its best and worst - and other, non-human people, who exemplify the same.

It’s a great book. You should read it.