Review - Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds

Cover by http://www.blacksheep-uk.com

Shadow Captain (Revenger, 2)
Alastair Reynolds
Gollancz, 10 January 2019
HB, 432pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Shadow captain via Netgalley.

Following from 2016's Revenger, Shadow Captain picks up the fortunes of the Ness sisters, Arafura and Adrana, now that they have found each other, destroyed the dread pirate captain Bosa Sennen and seized her ship, the Nightjammer.

If Revenger was subtitled The True and Accurate Testimony of Arafura Ness, then Shadow Captain is written from Adrana's. Together the two volumes dramatise the distrusts that have been sown between the sisters - in particular by Bosa's attempts to condition Adrana to be her successor. Bosa is a wonderful, monstrous creation, not one women but a whole series pursuing her cruel schemes out there in the darkness on the edge of empty space... Bosa may be dead, but the grip of the shadow captain is still tight on this book, with a real doubt as to whether or not Adrana has a bit too much of Bosa in her.

This story is very much a yarn in the best, Stevensonian vein. It may be set millions of years in the future, after the Earth and all the planets have been shattered and reworked into millions of worlds that form a could around the sun. There may have been umpteen 'occupations' - civilisations reaching across the solar system - in all that time. There may be aliens ('crawlies'). But it's a pirate novel, all the same, as 'sun jammers' - spacecraft propelled by vast sails to catch the solar flux - ply their trade, 'privateers' raid cryptic, deadly vaults - 'baubles' - which contain client treasure and technology and above all, in the way that the story is ruled by lust for the clinking 'quoins' which have become humanity's universal store of value. Rumoured to contain human souls, rumoured to... well, there are all sorts of rumours, the quoins have an air of mystery about them, a mystery that Bosa was apparently determined to crack.

Reynolds pays close attention to the mood and language of his book, adopting a distinctive vocabulary (references to 'coves' and 'leagues' abound) that reinforces the nautical atmosphere. Together with the scattering of small ports furnished by his millions of artificial worlds and the fragmented, disparate nature of the society that inhabits them, we have the perfect background for a story of escape (the Ness sisters originally ran away from their safe home to escape boredom and marriage and to seek adventure), treachery, revenge (of course) and battle (of course).

As the story opens, the two sisters are reflecting on their position. Their ship, Revenger, formerly Nightjammer, and her ex captain, have such a grim reputation that they're liable to be engaged on sight by any legitimate vessel (and most that aren't). Nobody is likely to believe the story that Senn is no more - it's just the sort of ruse she'd invent to take in an unwary captain. So how can the sisters and their crew trade for necessities and recruit the new shipmates they need? Will they be driven into a pariah existence, on the edge of the Empty, everyone's hand against them?

Reynolds has great fun with this scenario, with the mistrust between the sisters and with the lingering doubts about Bosa while steering his craft - sorry, the language is catching! - from skirmish to mystery to raid. There's even an extended sequence with a distinctly noirish feel, taking place on a beaten up space station ruled over by a grotesque crime boss and where it actually rains most of the time. Yes, I know that sounds as though it shouldn't work but work it does, creating a real atmosphere of menace and threat.

Behind all this, of course, is the deeper mystery, the story of the Occupations, how they happen and why they end and the nature of the quoins. The successive civilisations - interspersed by ages of barbarity - mean that humanity's history and destiny is shrouded, hidden (and one begins to suspect, there are those who want it to stay that way). Driven by nothing more than sheer curiosity, the Ness sisters are determined to find the truth - if not swallowed up first by pirate ghosts, deadly baubles or some other catastrophe they bring down upon themselves -  and I really, really hope that Reynolds writes that resolution to the series.

Excellent space opera-y, pirate-y adventure. Strongly recommended.

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

Image from www.gollancz.co.uk

Revenger
Alastair Reynolds
Gollancz, 15 September 2016
HB, 432pp
Source: e-copy kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley

This review appeared in the October 2016 Shiny New books.

Alastair Reynolds has a reputation as a prolific writer of SF and made waves a few years ago when he signed a ten book deal with Gollancz. However, I hadn't read any of his books before Revenger so I wasn't sure what to expect. I understand, though, that it's not typical of his work, especially in that, as I heard him put it in an interview, it's "YA approachable". He also said he'd deliberately written a shorter book, and a more pacey book.

So this seemed like a good place to start reading Reynolds's stuff, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. Revenger is an action-packed, swashbucking adventure with dashes, perhaps, of steam or even cyber-punk which at the same time, tells a solid space opera story - literally: everything that happens, happens in space: even the 'worlds' are not planets but engineered habitations no more than a few leagues in length or breadth. These worlds, numbering in the millions (there are whole books that catalogue them) surround the Old Sun, forming the 'Constellation'. If there were planets they have been reworked, mined away, over millions of years, during which time umpteen civilisations have flourished and decayed. It's a bold and exciting setting, giving a convincing depth of history (there are allusions to wars, alien incursions, the return of generation ships from the deep) and also scope for the sort of ship-borne antics you might otherwise get in Stevenson or Ballantyne - but IN SPACE!

The story is narrated by Fura Ness: she's nearly (but not quite) 16 which is an issue because it means that - unlike her slightly older sister Adrana - if her father catches her, he can have her brought home and treated with a drug to prevent her ever growing up. (There is a creepy doctor sidekick more than willing to administer said drug). This touch of Roald Dahlish adult perfidy is meant to show, I think, how unbalanced Father is by the loss of Fura and Adrana's mother: and perhaps also to explain their decision to run away to space.

Because this is, most of all, a version of that classic tale where a young girl takes to the high seas in search of adventure, danger and booty. (The family fortunes were lost in an ill-advised expedition: Fura and Adrana want to replenish them with loot). Think Treasure Island crossed with... whatever your favourite space opera is. There's a consciously rollicking, West Country lilt and a distinct argot to the speech of the girls' crewmates, with words like 'cove' (for a person) 'the glowy', 'the Empty' and much, much more - alongside the abandoned tech of past civilizations, which can be recovered, at great risk, from 'baubles', tiny caches out there in the dark.

Treasure Islands, which the brave can loot - if they dare.

If they survive...

The tech seems to be vital to the current civilisation: even the sailcloth that enables the 'sunjammers' to ride the flux of solar radiation isn't made any more and the very currency that's used between the worlds - the strange 'quoins' - is found in the caches, like so many ill-gotten doubloons.

But where there is treasure there are pirates. Also out there, somewhere in the dark, is the incomparable pirate captain Bosa Sennen with her crew of cutthroats, who will stop at nothing.

Bosa Sennen. What can I say about here A legend who, they say, can't exist, because her stories have been told for decades. A pirate captain of peerless cruelty, evil-hearted as they come, fearless, cunning and posssessed of a matchless ship.

If she exists...

The book is, then a swaggering, expansive story of theft, revenge, bloodlust - with some even darker hints. There are aliens, who don't appear much, but seem to have their own agenda. There are the caches of loot, which include some deeply eerie artifacts - 'ghostie stuff' - which are useful, but seem to sap the very soul. And, perhaps most chilling of all, is Adrana's and Fura's natural affinity, with 'the bones' which provide the most creepy form of communication I've encountered in SF.

While this is clearly a book which has many antecedents - besides the Victorian classics, I could also throw in China Mieville's Railsea, as another example of a story which takes nautical conventions and places them in a new setting, or M John Harrison's Viriconium, for the sheer sense of age, the whole living on a junkheap vibe - Reynolds has created a unique atmosphere, a tense, gripping and pacey book that ought by rights to establish a whole new genre.

And in Fura, especially, he's also created a vivid and determined protagonist, not your stereotypical kick-ass heroine but a young woman who has found adventure but more, steeled herself to do what she must to win back something she has lost. In the course of the book Fura transforms from starry eyed teen to grim, accomplished crewmate, ruthless and, in the right cause, downright dishonest. By the end of the book there's an open question as to whether she's given up more than she can win back - what with the schemes she's laid, the betrays that are necessary, trucking with the Bones, using the ghostie stuff - but most of all, stepping into that grim lawless sphere beyond the Constellation...

Strongly recommended for anyone who's stirred by the thought of high adventure and who values a genuinely ripping SF yarn.