#Review - Stars and Bones by Gareth L Powell

Stars and Bones (Continuance, 1)
Gareth L Powell
Titan Books, 1 March 2022
Available as: PB, 352pp
Source: Advance copy
ISBN: 9781789094282

I'm grateful to Titan Books for a free advance copy of Stars and Bones to consider for review.

The first in a new series from Gareth Powell, Stars and Bones is an ambitious, not to say audacious, space opera that imagines a very different near-future for humanity from that depressing one we may expect - though it is not a future on Earth.

No, rather, within a handful of generations, Powell sees us cast out of our soiled Eden to become nomads, ever sailing the currents of space in a fleet of arks, searching for a place where we are allowed to drop anchor. 

With overtones of "2001" and a distinct sense of judgement, Stars and Bones follows a split timeline, showing us how this came to be through the perspectives of the world's richest man, Haruki, and a couple of scientists, Frank and Victoria, who all witnessed the start of the exile. Seventy-five years into the future, it follows Eryn, Navigator of survey ship Curious Ocelot, which, in the best Star Trek tradition, is about to discover something nasty, very nasty indeed, on a planet known as Candidate-623.

I loved the relationship between Eryn and the sentient Ocelot (represented in physical form by its avatar, a blue-skinned person). There's a level of familiarity and banter between them which hints at how close and trusting they are: bonded for life and with fates linked (elsewhere we see the horror when that bond is broken). I also liked Eryn full stop: her impulsiveness, her looking out for sulky teenage niece Madison. Most of all, the guilt-ridden relationship with sister Shay, Madison's mum, who's missing now creates some complex dynamics between the three and undercurrents which challenge Eryn in discharging her varied duties. There are moments when I just wanted to shout "do the thing!" to Eryn while understanding her hesitation or how she was torn. Life in space circa 2100CE is riddled with dilemmas, perhaps explaining if not always excusing Eryn's general affect of searching for somebody to thump.

There are to be fair plenty of candidates for that honour, from the leader of a survey team who seems determined to court as much danger as possible, to the deadly alien shape-shifters who plague Eryn throughout the book, to the... But that would be to spoil the story. Let's just say there is one entity here, of vast power and ancient origin, that is particularly aloof. And annoying.

It's an action-packed, combat-rich novel, part escape, part race to uncover a mystery dating back to the early days of the exile, and the survival of the drifting human race is (of course) in peril. We see how in the vast fleet, humans have recreated - but also reworked - the divisions imported from Earth, with vastly different takes on abundance. We see how many, life-limiting cultural mores have been overcome - but not everywhere. 

We also occupy one of my favourite situations in SF - the close-knit crew sharing space on a small, slightly rackety spacecraft through a combination of uneventful flight and unimaginable danger and the familiar locations - mess room, cramped quarters, hold and flight deck (seriously, if I could I'd build one of those just to live in). Familiar, maybe, but perfectly realised and deeply atmospheric. 

What else?

Oh yes. Did I mention that we also meet a talking cat? Sam is fitted with an implant and able to vocalise, but he's still all cat, strolling in amidst a crisis to ask when he'll be fed. There's much more as well - a pair of detectives, the universe's most annoying influencer ever, and a fantastic, awe-inspiring location which our heroes must visit to find a recluse who may, just, have the answer that will save humanity.

Exciting, entertaining, scary at times and refreshingly different, I enjoyed Stars and Bones immensely and would strongly recommend it.

For more information about Stars and Bones, see the Titan books website here.

Review - Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

Chilling Effect
Valerie Valdes
Orbit, 13 February
PB, 437pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance copy of Chilling Effect.

Valerie Valdes's debut space opera is a galloping spree of an adventure, featuring a resourceful and ruthless human hero, Captain Eva Innocente, umpteen species of aliens, a space Emperor with a bad case of entitlement and a worse attitude to women, kidnappers, ancient artifacts, bad parenting, and cats. So. Many. Cats.

And sex.

Eva is just trying to make an honest living (at last!), captaining her freighter, La Sirena Negra, and avoiding trouble. Possessor of a shady past (we are given hints but not told the full story) she thinks has got out from that but runs into trouble when her latest assignment - those cats! - goes wrong, and into even more trouble when said Emperor attempts to procure her when she stops for a break at a space station.

Then something really bad happens, and she falls into the power of The Fridge, the biggest gangster syndicate in the galaxy.

I loved the style of this book, with Eva fleeing one tight corner after another. It's a fast paced book with plenty of zapping and lots of bangs, as every assignment she undertakes turns - inevitably - into a firefight. There's a bit of the atmosphere of Douglas Adams, notably in the array of alien species - including one, the quennian, that communicates largely by smell - but most evidently in the sheer zest, the absolute intensity, of the writing: Valdes is clearly having fun.

It's more than that, though. Despite the fractured, episodic quality of the story - with little time wasted on travel between the various planets, Gates and other sites of interest - there is emotional heart here as Eva must negotiate her own past, her relationship with her father and sister,  her dealings with her crew who seem devoted to her (a devotion she hardly shows much sign of deserving) and most of all, her feelings for Vakar, one of the quennians and an alien for who she has more then a bit of a thing going.

Reader: prepare for a lot of "Will they, Won't they?", conflicted feelings, Duty vs Desire and even some Secrets as a backdrop to all the mayhem. The two strands balance perfectly, keeping us in tension through most of the story but giving... release... where it counts. It's a fun read.

Also packed with SF and cultural references (a moisture farmer who wants to fly space ships, the possibility of attacking a space station with a lucky shot into an exhaust, a woman in a fridge, a bit of "well actually" that leads to trouble) that you'll enjoy spotting and with psychic cats*, this is an entertaining and joyful novel which seems certain to be the start of a popular series.

(I would say, you might brush up on your Spanish before reading, Eva tends to lapse into Spanish in moments of stress).

For more about the book and to read an extract, visit the Orbit website here.

*We could actually see more of the cats? Please?

Review - Victory Disc by Andrew Cartmel

Cover design by Martin Stiff

Victory Disc (Vinyl Detective, 3)
Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 8 May 2018
PB, 432pp

I'm grateful to Titan for an advance copy of this book.

This is the 3rd in the series featuring the (unnamed) Vinyl Detective, his girlfriend Nevada, annoying best friend Tinkler, getaway driver Clean Head and, of course, cats Turk and Fanny. The setup is well established - the Vinyl Collector hunts down old records, and his commissions typically involve him in a historical mystery, which has enough echoes in the present to threaten considerable danger.

Victory Disc is no exception, but takes the gang out of their comfort zone (if being threatened, drugged, burgled or kidnapped can be so described) as the hunt is for even older and rarer records than before - specifically for wartime recordings of the RAF's Flare Path Orchestra, a band of serving airmen purportedly set up to compete with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The Flare Path Orchestra wasn't, of course, real, the Miller band (of course) was. Yet Cartmel has an amazing knack for describing  (totally fictitious) music so convincingly that you're almost there, listening to it. Very evocative, as is the name Flare Path Orchestra itself which made me think of Terrance Rattigan's play Flare Path, also set against the background of bomber crews in the Second World War.

Of course there's a mystery to be unravelled here, the murder of a young woman, Gillian Gadon, during the war, for which a young RAF officer was hanged. (I strongly approved of the fact that in this story Nevada insists on using Gadon's name, making her more than simply an object of male violence). This backstory intertwines with a commission, in the present, by the wealthy Miss Honeyland, to hunt down any serviving records by the Orchestra whose leader was her father, "Lucky" Lucian Honeyland. (One slight gripe: Honeyland's is described as "Colonel" - not an RAF rank, I think). That sets The Vinyl Detective (or the Shellac Shamus, as Nevada describes him now that he's delving into the age of 78s) tracking down surviving members of the band, widening his knowledge of the wartime bombing campaign (at the heart of the book there is, among other things, a compassionate argument about the cruelty of that campaign and its effect both on German cities and on the aircrew themselves).

This is Cartmel at his best, sending the team off on a series of rackety day trips to obscure corners of Kent, portraying the foibles and varied lives of the surviving band/ squadron members while throwing in an eclectic gallery of record eccentric collectors, menacing thugs, murder historians and, inevitably, more cats (poor Abner...) It all moves pretty briskly and - another thing I like in these books - the crew behave intelligently, understanding (from previous adventures) that there may be danger out there. Not that this makes the book staid or boring - it has a pretty scary climax and the revelations that follow complete a satisfying story, bringing the crimes of the past right into the present and showing how evil persists. Indeed there is something of a sense of urgency to the story and a demand to question appearances and remain vigilant. Another strong theme is erasure, particularly of artists (that's a vein consistently explored in all these books).

In all this was an exciting and atmospheric mystery and a good addition to the Vinyl Detective's casebook. I note that a further instalment, Flip Back, is due in 2019 and I wish the anonymous record-finder and his partner plenty of good, fresh coffee and decent food in their next outing.

Final note: while Cartmel avoids using the Collector's name - how long can he keep that up? - he does use pronouns, so I'm not just falling into a lazy assumption that the character is male!

For more about the book see the publisher's website here.