#Blogtour #Review - Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze by Tom Mandrake, DJ Ben Ha Meen and Mellow Brown

Purple Haze

DJ Ben Ha Meen and Mellow Brown (writers), Tom Mandrake (artist)
Titan Comics, 27 August 2024
Available as: HB, 128pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787731899

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the graphic novel's blogtour.

From the publisher

This is a pure rock and roll space opera featuring the legendary Jimi Hendrix as you’ve never seen him before. 

Fully sanctioned by Experience Hendrix L.L.C.; Authentic Hendrix, LLC - this is the first ever full-length graphic novel inspired by the music of the legendary Jimi Hendrix – arguably the world’s greatest guitarist. 

This 21st Century psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll odyssey sees Jimi Hendrix embark on a quest to the very centre of the universe in search of a magical talisman powerful enough to unlock the incredible latent power of his music so that he can share it with a universe starved of the rock ‘n’ roll by a tyrannical intergalactic force hellbent on silencing all music from the universe and enslaving all life. 

What I thought

Space opera. Rock opera. Seemingly unrelated genres which the collaborators behind this graphic novel nevertheless pull together with aplomb. The result is great as an example of each, but put together, something much more.

Yes, we get zoomy spaceships, vivid alien worlds, combat and awesome vistas, that genuine sense of wonder that space opera must deliver. But we also get what is actually - so far as such a thing is possible - a pretty vivid visualisation of a musical high (is that a thing? I think it's a thing) as the central character here, Hendrix, takes to the stage on a galaxy-crossing tour. Lyrics stream by in a kind of diagetic cloud. The music ignites in the intense shades of a fiery sun, blazing across the page. At once, deeply SFnal, deeply musical.

But, as I said, there is more here too. The story finds Hendrix, mysteriously, playing on an endless tour in this far-future dystopia. The how and why of that's never explained, but that doesn't actually loom large in the story and it doesn't really matter. Rather we have this guitar hero pushing his message of peace and brotherhood in a galaxy embroiled in brutal war. He's doing all he can, he thinks.

But of course he's not (I had vibes here of Springsteen's No Surrender "There's a war outside still raging/ You say it ain't ours anymore to win" and there's a moment of realisation with attempts to coop the tour  for sinister purposes, a moment of truth and decision which leads to a fascinating quest. The ultimate test here is then very much one of those "surely there must be another way?" setups where, behind the spaceships and the zooming, the point is that the hero must, will, reject the constraints imposed on them and do the different thing. The Kobayashi Maru moment, in Star Trek language.

And who better, in such a moment, to use their humanity, their sympathy, their courage, than Jimi Hendrix?

A fine graphic novel with a powerful, beating heart. Recommended.

For more information about Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

#Review - Simul by Andrew Caldecott

Simul (Momenticon, 2)

Andrew Caldecott
Arcadia (Jo Fletcher Books) 18 January 2024
Available as: HB, 384, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529415476

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Simul to consider for review.

Simul is the second part of the story that began in Momenticon. Almost impossible to summarise, it features a near-future world destroyed by pollution. Only small islands of inhabitability survive amidst the Murk - a toxic substance that erodes pretty much anything that isn't heavily protected - or very lucky. 

These protected zones tend to have been engineered, in particular the domes operated by two companies - Tempestas and Genrich - organisations with different ideas about how to preserve humanity. In Momenticon, the story started in another dome, one built to house a museum of art, and we met Fogg, its Curator, who rather drove that story. He plays much less of a role in this book, although he does appear as do many of the characters from that earlier book.

Others of the protected areas appear to be fortuitous, the result of freakish weather patterns or other features

The cast is extensive. Though the author provides a handy list, it took me a little time to work myself back into knowing who was who - that was perhaps made harder because many of the characters don't come across as very different people, and the story, told in short chapters, flits between them and between locations (travel is possible on airships, though perilous). As I've said, Momenticon was much more focussed on Fogg, so at first I did feel a bit more adrift among new people, scenes and plot developments (there are a few flashbacks). It's rather one thing after another as these people - some loveable, some roguish but nearly all very archly peculiar, if that makes sense - race to achieve very different objectives. 

To do that they will need to unpick an extensive history, since almost nobody here really understands what is happening (or has happened) and why. A new threat has emerged as Nature - infuriated by the way she has been treated, or perhaps merely irritated by this gallery of eccentrics - strikes back, carrying out new attacks on both flesh and on metal. It is a threat that nobody expected, but to which all respond in ways one would expect. Some try to co-opt the menace as a new weapon, others to find a defence, still others, a means of counter-attack. Crossed with all the conflicting motives, hatreds and misunderstandings that were set up in Momenticon and develop in the first part of Simul, that makes for a pretty exciting conclusion where - I don't think this is a spoiler - the villains (more or less) get their comeuppances and the heroes (more or less) their just rewards (although a few fall by the wayside). 

It is maybe a bit less satisfying the more you try to understand what's going on and exactly how it came about. There are so many rabbits pulled out of hats that Watershed Down could well be in production somewhere in the background. However I don't think that most readers will worry too much about doing   that but will rather be enjoying the rush of events, and the particular, peculiar atmosphere of a Caldecott novel.

The cover design, illustrations and map (by, respectively, Leo Nickolls, Nick May and Nicola Howell Hawley) are evocative and intricate.

More information about Simul is available at the publisher's website here.

#Review - Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Nona the Ninth (Locked Tomb, 3)
Tamsyn Muir
Recorded Books, 13 September 2022 
Available as: HB, 477pp, audio, 17 hours 46min, e  
Source: Audio subscription 
ASIN: B0B1QRHPH9

Nona the Ninth is the third part of the Locked Tomb sequence, after Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth. 

It is very hard to describe the relationship between this book and the previous because, first, that requires both of the other books to be thoroughly spoiled and secondly, the relationship is pretty obscure. (If you like things neat, cut, and dried, you'll find the progression infuriating).

On the other hand, as a self-contained story, it's s bit easier to describe what is going on, and I think Nona can be read perfectly well at that level (though you will then miss some allusions to the others).

Nona is a young woman living on a planet or colony world that is either itself in rebellion against the Galactic Empire or part of a wider uprising (details are not exactly clear). The rebellion is driven by a faction called the Sons of Eden who are themselves riven into cliques will to fight each other. The Sons of Eden object to the Emperor's necromantic power (necromancy is the fundamental fact of all the books). Nona is cared for by three adults called Camilla Heat, Palamedes and Pyrrha who are either sheltering from the conflict among other refugees, or outright lying low. The four, and Nona in particular, are of interest to the Sons of Eden (which features members with names like We Suffer and We Suffer, and Crown Him With Many Crowns). Nona is either attending or working at a school for refugees kids, at which she becomes entwined with Hot Sauce and her gang.

There is a lot more going on here of course. Key issues in the book include Nona's identity - both the nature of the strong, kind and resourceful girl we see stepping off the page here, and who she might really be (whatever that means - if you've read the other books you may have a hint of the issues but no spoilers!)

Camilla and Palamedes do seem to be the same characters as their namesakes in early books, although there is a wrinkle on that which is never directly stated but which you'll work out.

I should add that it's actually a lot easier to follow all this if you read the audio. As ever, Moira Quirk performs miracles in bringing the various characters to vivid life and she gives them distinct voices which makes it much more straightforward to follow what is going on when some of the more, er, obscure things happen. If you can I'd strongly recommend reading the book that way.

In terms of plot development within the Locked Tombiverse, at one level there are few surprises here - the rebellion, and the Empire's difficulties, were already established - but at another, there is a lot of detail about the deep origins of the Emperor, making clear that, yes, this is our universe, and sort-of showing what the original sin was that led to the Locked Tomb.

On the other hand, Nona the Ninth is an absolutely brilliant episode in the wider story, Nona herself being a gloriously character who is absolutely having a great time in her life, despite the variety of weird and creepy things going on around her. Muir allows her a much more uncomplicated network of relationships and friendships that anyone in the earlier books did (even if we suspect there are some ulterior motives going on) and that gives the book a much lighter atmosphere than its predecessors. Away from the gothicism of the Nine Houses, it seems that humans can still breathe a bit and that is good to see.

All in all, a delightful story which I'd highly recommend. It seems this trilogy has now stretched to four books and I won't argue with that, not one bit, if Muir keeps delivering such sharp, engaging episodes.

#Review - Hel's Eight by Stark Holborn

Hel's Eight
Stark Holborn
Titan Books, 21 March 2023

Available as: PB, 353pp, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803362298

I'm grateful to the author for sending me a copy of Hel's Eight to consider for review.

One day older and deeper in debt...

Taking place in the same setting as Ten Low, Hel's Eight picks up the story a few years later with ex-convict "Doc" Ten living in a shack in the forsaken wastes of the moon Factus.

As soon becomes clear, Ten isn't out there for her own good. She is doing what she can to treat the desperate people who scratch a living in the dust, trying to level the score, to atone for the great wrong she believes she did. And by living in isolation, accompanied only by her battered robot dog Rowdy, she hopes to avoid bringing down further trouble on anyone else. She's cut herself off from such friends and acquaintances as she still has, including her sometime lover Silas. 

Then one day, the past comes knocking on Ten's door. A showdown is looming with the acquisitive Xoon Futures corporation, which seems to have money - or at least, company tokens - to throw around and which has been muscling in on Factus, threatening the fragile lives and fragile independence of its inhabitants.  You'd think Factus a place so wretched and perhaps cursed that surely anyone sane would stay far away. We saw in the previous book how the moon is haunted by the bizarre Ifs - generally referred to in superstitious areas as just "They". They might be fates, gods or who knows what but They seem able to surf the possibilities of the future, feeding off the alternates. It seems now that Ten may have unfinished business with Them - or They with her - but others may now have learned that and have plans to make use of her. So Ten has to decide whether to listen to the call and come back for one last adventure...

As Ten struggles with that dilemma, we are given additional context about Factus through diary entries written decades earlier by 'Pec "Eight" Esterházy', a convict who came to Factus and whose fate may explain a little of what is going on. 

Ten is a fascinating and complex character who has lived a fascinating and complex life. One senses the tension in her, the regret at what she's done, the fear of what it may do to her, but also her desire to protect and to rescue the inhabitants of Factus from a grim choice between a grinding existence and ownership by Xoon. In this remote part of space (on the edge of 'the Void') those endless alternate outcomes that feed Them seem to be opposed by a commercial monoculture in which everything and everyone is owned and controlled. What play of possibilities can there be in that, what freedom?

It's just brilliant how Holborn takes the tyranny embodied by the "company town" and dials it up to, oh, twenty three or something, weaving it into a truly existential, spiritual menace that is only heightened because out here on the edge, there is nobody to ride to the rescue.

That concept is sharpened by the obvious fun that Holborn is having here with a setting that while firmly futuristic and more than a little bit weird, also echoes there classic Western - transport by some sort of vehicle referred to as a "mule", dusty, dead-end towns and trading-posts, abandoned mines and the gangs of 'Road Agents'. 

I just loved this book, equal parts horror, Western and SF (and some other things too) and fully, gloriously itself, its own twisted, wonderful thing, an absorbing read and a truly distinctive one.

For more information about Hel's Eight, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

The Terraformers
Annalee Newitz
Orbit, 2 February 2023
Available as: PB, 338pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356520865 

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of The Terraformers to consider for review.

The Terraformers is, I think, Newitz's first book for several years and it is really good to see a new work from this author. It is an excellent of example of all that SF can be at its best - challenging, laden with breathtaking ideas, and epic in scale and conception (though in this case not length - it's refreshing to meet a book with a span of centuries and a planetary scale narrative that is not a trilogy).

Set some 60,000 years in the future, The Terraformers considers our future at a time when "people" have spread far and wide across the universe. Post the "Great Bargain" other forms of life than humanity - animals and plants, as well as various AIs, bots and hybrids of bio, tech and AI  - qualify as "people" and are entitled to a say in how things are run. This activity is overseen by "Environmental Rescue Teams", ERTs, whose focus is ecology, but more than that - one might almost say theirs is the science, or perhaps the engineering, of community, in the broadest possible sense.

So this book is filled with lifeforms designed, or engineered, for particular purposes - H. Sapiens may assume they are the default, the template, but they can be designed to be ultra-receptive to networks, or reworked as H. Varialis to breathe atmospheres of carbon and nitrogen. We meet sentient, flying moose, intelligent cows with bionic legs, and a cat reporter who forms a friendship with a flying train. Newton's audacious concepts only sound bizarre out of context: in the story they arise as almost inevitable in this future, and not just as technological maybes but as actual, living, feeling and suffering - well, people, which is the point, I think.

Troublingly for a future in which such a bewildering array of life is given a voice, and one in which there is radical acceptance of individuals (Newitz presents a variety of genders and all manner of romantic connections) economic and social inequality is as bad as ever, or perhaps worse. Corporates are able to, literally, build and own people, burning in rules to keep those people in their place. The Terraformers is about, among other things, how that process - built on the rock of private ownership - comes to be challenged.

Structured as three episodes taking place over several centuries we see the development of a new planet, Sask-E, in its early days a "pristine" wilderness (only, not really), some time later with cities are being established, and then, in the third part, as those cities fall under the control of a particularly unpleasant corporate overlord pandering to a strain of H. Sapiens genetic particularity. Each time, it's ingenuity, solidarity and daring that saves the day, though most of the characters we meet don't overlap between the parts, even though these are recognisably stories of the same communities. (I was reminded rather of Asimov's earliest Foundation stories, visiting the same polity at interesting times during a long evolution, although the imaginative leaps here are much greater and the science social as much as physical).

The accent is, then, on people (of wide and diverse types) confronting "problems" - environmental, political and developmental - their interventions then being allowed to run and the results presented  centuries later. A risk with such a structure could be that really, we're just being given a kind of animated history: Newitz pushes back on that by making the main characters gloriously, passionately real, giving then lives, loves and involvements that both illuminate and transcend the development of the plot. Indeed, one senses that at some levels, aspects of these people have complicated, rather than facilitated, the author's plotting - but also that at another, they are the perfect illustration of a thesis that the future is diverse, and that it needs to be diverse. The "plot" therefore accommodates variety of both forms and opinions and apparent drawbacks of that - the awkwardness of decision making in the ERTs, for example - are really strengths.

It's a complex, thought-provoking and engaging book. Though I think it won't be for everyone - the story telling is in a very particular style and often the viewpoint characters are far form driving the plot -  it's a style that grew on me and that really pays off, suiting both the setting of the book and the duracxtion of the storyline. And behind that, Newitz really is a clever and accomplished storyteller, giving us something genuinely different and ultimately breathtaking.

Wonderful reading.

For more information about The Terraformers, see the publisher's website here.

 

#Review - Rosebud by Paul Cornell

Rosebud
Paul Cornell
Tordotcom, 26 April 2022
Available as: PB, 101pp, e
Source: Purchased copy
ISBN(PB): 9781250765406

I'm always pleased to see that Paul Cornell has a new book out, and I wish there were more of them.

Rosebud is a perfect story, in outward form an account of contact between the crew of a far-travelling spaceship and... well, that would be giving things away but maybe I can say that there are resonances with a certain well-known SF encounter with a black monolith? (And also passing references in the text to Rendezvous with Rama?)

But that's not really the point. 

The point is, I think, the variegated characters in the crew. They comprise, at the time the story takes place,  'by force of law, a balloon, a goth with a swagger stick, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects.. The key here is the reference to law. This is, in effect, a convict ship, the possession of the benighted Company, for whom our heroes - instantiated digitally in a tiny (millimetres in size) ship - endlessly toil, retrieving resources for the dying planet Earth.

The stories of how the five assumed these forms slowly emerge, and of course those bizarre forms end up making perfect sense given the "crimes" for which they're serving time (some ugly flashbacks illustrate what Earth has become and why the Company may not be a fitting sponsor for humanity in the encounter that may be taking place).

It's a clever, thought provoking story that combines a deliberately jarring sensibility with a deep emotional richness both in the backgrounds of the five and in their unlikely friendship (larded though it is with bickering and HR-unfriendly insults). That's a lot to pack in to a bare 100 pages, but Cornell gives the reader more here than many authors do in full-length novels. I was torn between wanting more - why couldn't this be a LONGER book? - and knowing that it's perfect as it is.

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Rosebud, see the publisher's website here.
 

#Review - Catalyst Gate by Megan E O'Keefe

Catalyst Gate (The Protectorate, 3)
Megan E O'Keefe
Orbit, 24 June 2021
Available as: PB, 608pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy provided by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9780356512259

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Catalyst gate, via #NetGalley.

Catalyst Gate is the third book in The Protectorate trilogy (after Velocity Weapon and Chaos Vector). The Protectorate is absolutely the kind of trilogy you need to read in order and if you haven't read the others, and you want to understand whether to read the trilogy, you need to go back to my earlier reviews and not read on here because spoilers. (Hint: you should read the trilogy).

If you've been following The Protectorate you will almost certainly want to read the third part, so part of me wonders what I'm actually doing in this review. I often have this with trilogies, and my answer is basically (1) How well is the author closing off her sequence - does this book stand comparison well with the others? (2) How good is the trilogy overall?

Taking these questions in order, my answer to the first would be, VERY WELL. There are a lot of moving parts in The Protectorate. The story follows Sanda, a commander of the Fleet who's been through all kinds of weird stuff; experimented on by a hostile power; deceived by the first incarnation of the AI known as Bero into believing that her world has been smashed and that she has been marooned in deep space for decades; romanced by plausible rogue, spy-for-hire and, potentially, artificial lifeform, Tomas; framed for an assassination and hunted by her own side; and much more besides. It follows Sanda's brother Biran, a rising politician and Keeper in The Protectorate, who has discovered that its history and politics and a lot less pure that he believed. There was also the group of gutter rats who, for most of the first two books, were coping with the consequences of their disastrous heist-gone-wrong, as a result of which their leader Jules has become the loosest of loose cannons, allying with the alien entity known as Rainer.

In this third book O'Keefe deftly takes forward all these main protagonists (and more). She still has plenty to say about them all - we aren't just going through the motions - even as Rainier's endgame approaches. There are further surprises, and a series of calculated risks taken by all involved. Things kick off very quickly at the beginning of the book - there is no lengthy recap, but O'Keefe still manages to keep the reader in the frame about backstory and motivations so that the story develops organically and everyone feels "real". Yes, there were a few (a very few) exceptions, when I asked myself "why did he/ she do that?" but I feel that is inevitable in any sequence of this length.

As well as the characters, we are still learning more about this universe and its history. This is far-future SF, following humanity long after it has left Earth, and it turns out there are secrets to be told about that whole history. Topically they're bound up with the originals of "Prime Inventive", which I had always seen as a society but which is actually the descendant of a private company - the one which happened to win out in the contest to explore space. Firmly believing that nothing good can come from over-mighty corporations, I wasn't surprised to learn there'd been dirty work at the crossroads and that it involved the alien tech whose origin and purpose has been a prominent theme through this trilogy. And yes, we finally discover more about that too. 

I am, I think, moving on to my question (2) above and my answer is that while each part of this trilogy has been very good indeed, the whole has a kind of commonality and progression which makes it more than the sum of the three parts. Seen together, these books present questions - and warnings - about our stewardship not only of this planet but of the wider Universe, about loyalty, the nature of humanity and the corruptions of politics. In some ways the most human characters we meet here are composed of bits and bytes or of naneites; or are unregarded outsiders or junior players. The gilded priesthood of the Keepers shows a tendency to guile and self-interest rather than the common good, making it ten times harder to deal with the threat of Rainier and that's not an aberration but totally in keeping with the history and politics of Prime. In contrast, Sanda and her Fleeties, the rogues and criminals of the Grotta, Bero and Tomas, have a sense of humility and fragility that fires their suffering into strength and integrity. As O'Keefe writes of Sanda, 'Those pressures collided against the woman... compressed her, made her as hard and immovable as the deep ice...'

O'Keefe integrates these themes and makes her three novels into a single, coherent whole, no easy task in such a vast story, creating an absorbing and convincing world with compelling characters whose stories are told with humour and grit. I'd unreservedly recommend the sequence, if you've been waiting to see how it would turn out, and Catalyst Gate as its culmination.

For more information about Catalyst Gate, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin

Emergency Skin

NK Jemisin

Amazon Original Stories, 17 September 2019

Available as: Audio, 1 hour 4 mins, e

Narrators: Jason Isaacs

Source: Audio subscription

ASIN: B07X4JS37T

Emergency Skin is a remarkable novella, not least for the fact that Jemisin tells a story in which we never hear directly from the point of view character.

He - though the pronoun is moot, for reasons developed in the story which it would be spoilery to give here - is on a mission back to planet Earth (or "Telos" as we're told it should be called) to collect biological samples needed by the distant colony which is his home. Earth is expected to be a hostile wasteland, given that the colony in question was established to house those who had fled environmental destruction.

We're given this in formation by a narrator who is apparently an AI designed to assist the protagonist with this task. We only hear the AI's side of the conversation, together with the voices of one or two people he meets on earth (no, it's not a desert). The AI is a marvellously querulous and elitist construct, reflecting, of course, the views of its masters and betraying their own elitist and blinkered thinking. It's lovely to hear this consciousness come up against the conundrum that Earth simply seems to have flourished ones its makers - supposedly the best, brightest and most innovative of humanity - shoved off.

Again, no spoilers, but Jemisin does gives us an object lesson here in thinking beyond the dreary and reductive worldview of the tech lords and their political lapdogs. It's an impressive argument, albeit necessarily compressed given the form (I would like to see it articulated at greater length, perhaps in a novel) - essentially a challenge to the economic orthodoxy that privileges immediate profit above all. And she shows how openness to alternative view points, and courage, can lead us to challenge even the most ingrained assumptions. That's a lesson needed now more than ever, I think.

In all, a thought provoking and satisfying novella, due in no small part to Isaacs' narration, which captures the cadences both of the smug AI and of several person whom the protagonist encounters on Earth. As I've said, we never hear his voice but the compelling dialogue almost makes you think you have.

I'd recommend. 

#Review - Ten Low by Stark Holborn

Design by Julia Lloyd

Ten Low
Stark Holborn
Titan Books, 1 June 2021
Available as: PB, 336pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy kindly supplied by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9781789096620

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance copy of Stark Holborn's Ten Low to consider for review.

After reading Holborn's Nunslinger, Triggernometry and Advanced Triggernometry, I had high expectations for Ten Low and they were fully met.

Ten Low is a person - a woman living on the remote moon Factus, somewhere out on the edge of known space. "Ten" refers to the length of the sentence she's served before release onto this barren world - a desperate, arid place inhabited by organ scavengers, smugglers, religious fanatics and outlaws, all kept alive by a dripfeed of resources from the ruling power of space, the Accord, much of which is however skimmed off before it ever arrives, leaving Factus only the dregs.

I'm not sure whether this milieu is one that Ten chose, or whether there are reasons why she's here and not some more pleasant world, but it does seem appropriate for her because we gradually learn about some dark things she has to atone for. At the beginning though all we really know is that she's trying to save lives, trying to even up the score. Her status as a medic buys her a degree of protection, of neutrality, among her fellows even on Factus but it's not proof against all dangers - and particularly not the weird, fate-shifting effect of the mysterious 'Them'. 'They' are a race - or a supernatural power - or a myth - apparently native to Factus. You don't talk about Them, in case They hear and take a hand in things, causing, and feeding on, consequences and chaos. And Ten's all about the consequences, so she is constantly on her guard, looking for signs that They may be up to something.

Perhaps They are... into the blighted wastes of Factus comes an outsider, Gabi, a child General of the Accord, a woman (or girl - it's truly mixed up and I really don't know how to judge this) with plenty of blood on her hands, but of course absolved, as a member of the winning side in the recent war. Marooned after an accident with her ship, she's determined to get back to her command, but Factus isn't an easy place to escape. The two must make their way across the moon, trading for basic necessities at windswept outposts and evading an eager posse of bounty hunters, kidnappers and aggrieved citizens (it's complicated). Playing on the characteristic notes of a Western in a SF setting, Ten Low gives us one Woman With a Past and another woman - or girl - who may not have a Future (or who may have many Futures, if They have anything to do with it). 

The relationship between Ten and Gabi is initially hostile. The General assumes that Ten is a traitor, but the two need to cooperate to survive, and besides, Ten has obscure reasons of her own for wanting to save lives. The General is a decorated war hero, but rather at sea on this dusty moon and unable to call in help. Not a new setup, but Holborn truly makes it her own, allowing the two to speak for themselves (their character also becomes clearer through a range of allies and enemies with whom they have history). The relationship is complex, drawing on hurts and crimes and losses that are rarely actually described but which make themselves felt by their influence on the behaviours we see and on the goals and methods of the protagonists. Ten, for example, is reluctant to hurt or kill which frustrates the General but then something happens and we suddenly understand why she's like that. Gabi, the General, has clearly suffered some kind of conditioning to make her into a war-winning machine but there is more to her than that and you need to ask why she would - as she seems to have - cooperate with such a process?

Also unclear but (partly) revealed in the evolving pattern of this book is a developing mystery revolving around what 'They' want, something hinted at in obscure prophesies and startling moments where the hidden threads of the cosmos seem to be exposed. Ten seems important to that, although she doesn't understand the reasons any more than we as readers do (even though all this does at times seem to give her an edge).

It's a genuinely gripping story, driven by action on almost every page and the kind of book that once picked up, you don't want to let go till you've finished. Those desert wastes and enigmatic characters do grow on you...

For more information about Ten Low, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Jacket art by Tommy Arnold
Design by Jamie Stafford-Hill

Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, 2)
Tamsyn Muir
tor.com, 4 August 2020
Available as: HB, 507pp, e, audio
Source: online audio subscription (read by Moira Quirk)
ISBN (HB) 9781250313225

Harrow the Ninth is essentially Gideon the Ninth but dialled up several notches more (how is that possible?) with even more moving parts and a LOT more bones. It must have been exhausting to write.

Having survived the spooky, far future "And Then There Were None" of Canaan House, and finally achieved Lyctorhood, Harrowhark Nonegesimus finds herself in a remote space station, the refuge of the Emperor and his Saints, accompanied by some of said Saints, a motley lot. They are supposed to be training for the ultimate showdown with a Resurrection Beast and its Heralds, and there is much discussion of tactics - but Harrow is more concerned that  somebody is (or somebodies are) trying to kill her. Again.

The story plays out over several months leading up to... well an event that I won't name for spoiler reasons although it is well foreshadowed. Muir plays evil games with her timeline, popping back and forward months, weeks, hours, always anchoring things on that event, but only coming to describe it very late in the book.

She also includes side-trips back to Canaan House, where an alternate version of the events in Gideon the Ninth seems to be playing out, a darker version (really!) with a slightly different cast of characters. That's related to events in Harrow's present(s), of course, but it also gives an opportunity to reacquaint oneself with the rich cast of characters from the earlier book. We also meet the rest of the Lyctors (that motley crowd) in the "now". They really are a beguiling, infuriating, varied lot, having survived ten thousand years as servants of their Emperor and acquired ten thousand years' of grudges and regrets. 

It's clear that there is a great deal going on here - plots and politics, personal agendas, romance and long-nurtured rivalries. It all goes back to the roots of the Emperor's necromancy but also casts light on more recent events - some of those flashbacks are to Gideon's and Harrow's early lives and we learn a great deal about them. I didn't follow everything that happened - perhaps the decision to listen to the book, rather than reading it, and over several weeks, made this harder, although it brought compensations: the vivacity with which the narrator, Moira Quirk, reads the story, creating dozens of different personas for the various characters and actually morphing from one to another when certain things take place. (Without spoiling things, I will say that precisely who some of these voices are at particular points is important, and sometimes unexpected).

Overall, a treat for fans of necromancy (and who isn't?) though this is not a book to read - or listen to - unless you have read the first part of the trilogy. Not only will you be at sea but you'll miss various riffs on the first book and some things which are absolutely revelatory here will lose their power if you read them out of order.

For more information about Harrow the Ninth, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts

Purgatory Mount
Adam Roberts
Gollancz, 4 February 2021
Available as: HB, 336pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN: 9781473230941

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Purgatory Mount via NetGalley.

The eagles are coming! 

The eagles are here!

Adam Roberts is one author I'll always, always take time to read and I'd been sp looking forward to Purgatory Mount. I thought I knew what it was going to be about, and it was that... but also it wasn't, it turned out to be something much bigger and very different and thoroughly ramified. It does, though, rather defy a neat review. I could just say, buy this, and stop at that but I really want to persuade you, so let's try that.

Opening as a city-sized interstellar exploration ship, the Forward, arrives from Earth at a distant planet, V538 Aurigae - gamma, we seem to be in hard SF territory with a description of the long voyage, the peculiar emptiness of space in the interstellar "Local Bubble", the ice-encrusted ship itself (the ice provides both a shield and fuel), the crew - who are able to alter their perception to live faster or slower, surviving the generations long (for their livestock) voyage - and the mysterious alien artefact that has drawn Earthly attention. No, not an obelisk - an immense spire so high that it soars beyond the planet's atmosphere (indeed, beyond the original, deeper atmosphere long eroded by the local star). 

What is the spire made of? 

What is it for? 

Where did the makers go?

Just as we might think we know what's coming - Roberts will describe the crew's exploration and tease out these mysteries - he knocks the reader sideways by adopting a different genre, the near future thriller, and location, the USA a few years from now. That country is on the edge of civil war ('The problem is - there are plenty of people real keen to shoot their guns and run around in combat gear'). Ottoline (Otty to her friends, who call themselves the Famous Five in a reference which I suspect isn't to be found in the cultural life of the typical American teenager, now or near future) is fleeing from the adults. From government law enforcement. From the gun-toting militias. From a mysterious third faction. 

The description of the rending fabric of a modern state is terribly compelling and oh so convincing, particularly in that there isn't an overnight collapse. Otty sees a bureaucracy staggering, still trying to function, but losing its coherence and purpose. Even at the level of the combat, the increasingly dislocated refugees, the writing is terrific (in both senses) and remembering the turmoil on 6 January, I couldn't help compare this vision of a USA that has begun eating itself to that coverage on CNN of the swamping of the Capitol by an army of grotesques. 

That conjunction, which couldn't have been foreseen, makes this book seem prescient in detail, seem predictive, to an extent that may distract the reader from what I think is more fundamental, and intended, a sort of moral prescience which becomes clearer towards the end. But still, the idea of incipient civil war, of rage and destruction spraying in all directions, the urgency with which Roberts captures the violence, the unholy beauty he finds - look at the description of a coach being blown up ('Boom, boom, shake the room. Crush, crush, flip the bus') - all of this makes the book absolutely, grabbingly, compulsive. 

Roberts pulls out all the cultural stops in characterising this process, from the explosion 'like a colossal door being slammed shut somewhere in Hell' (yes, we know what that would be) to the queue jumping mob ('wearing Old Glory jackets and red MAGA caps') who try to barge onto the bus to the sharp eyed lawyers and journalists who prowl through the ruins trying to make a turn from the chaos. It's a purgatorial landscape for a sixteen year old to find herself traversing and there are no more answers as to why all this is going on than there are to why Otty is being targeted. We see a limited explanation from one character, that it's all about the money (in New Model Army, Roberts posited an almost cheerful, open-source approach to urban warfare, with some idealism driving it, here the mood is a great deal darker, more despairing).

I started reading this near-future section thinking, what's this - when do we get back to the Forward? - then found myself more and more drawn by the hectic story, the scrapes, the sheer guile and courage of a young woman whose life has been upended. We don't know, for most of the story, why Otty is on the run. She's far too canny to reveal that, to us or her interrogators. But her pursuers are clearly bad, tainted in some sense by an association with the chaos and destruction raining down and slowly, surely, they push Otty to a desperate place and to an act with unforeseeable consequences.

We do return to the Forward again, eventually, for a final act in which the connection between the two timelines is made clear. Otty's experiences turn out to be foundational to the existence of the Forward and its crew, but also to the position of others on board - to the creatures known as "Pygs" who worship the Crew as gods. And they drive the actions of both in a moral sense, Roberts invoking the concepts of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory - sidestepping the hard physics question of how that incredible, planet-topping spire was built and how it stands up for the more interesting question of what it means and what that means for those who have travelled so far to see it. 

That feels like a place I could stop - Purgatory Mount an utterly compelling book, fiercely intelligent and unconventional SF rife with ideas yet completely approachable and fun to read - but I think I also have to point out a couple of further things. First, Roberts' writing is glorious, subtlely varying to fit its subject - for example look at the down to earth, dryly humorous, opening section, even amidst all that science-y exposition, or the beauty he often evokes ('the sky was starting to blush strawberry and yellow-orange, with bars of luminous cream-coloured horizontal shine layered over the top of it'). It can also be mischievous, or mischievously inventive, as with the word 'sidegoogling' which occurs a few times (I NEED that word!) or references to the Forward's 'hal', its AI. And how about 'her heart was beating in her chest like Animal from the Muppets playing the drums'?

Which reference brings me to the second thing I wanted to mention here (and then I'm done, I promise). This book is drenched with Lord of the Rings references and comparisons. Most broadly, there's the whole device of telling us, as Roberts does in several places, that names or cultural references used to describe the ship or its crew have been translated into terms we can relate to from something utterly strange that we wouldn't get. (In fact the most blatant example of this didn't, as the author tells us in an afterword, survive copyright issues - he wanted  to give the five members of the Crew the names of the five wizards from The Lord of the Rings and indeed Pan, the one we meet most, 'a figure gifted with magic (in the Clarkean sense of the word) and given responsibility over beats, birds and plants...' would make a fine Radagast). There is also lots of detail, such as tree trunks which 'shuddered and moaned like Ents' at the force of an explosion, way bread, or all those references to eagles - The eagles are coming! The eagles are here! - but also 'Somebody would come to rescue her and she would fly away on the back of a Johannine eagle'. The latter bridges the gap between Tolkienish references and the Christian ones behind Purgatory Mount, with its themes of offence, of sin, redemption and atonement.

In short, this book is a glittering achievement, Adam Roberts in full splendour giving us a novel of ideas, of fun, of beauty. Go and get it.

For more about Purgatory Mount, see the publisher's website here. 

Review - Chaos Vector by Megan E O'Keefe

Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

Chaos Vector (The Protectorate, 2) 

Megan E O'Keefe

Orbit, 28 July 2020

Available as: PB, 546pp, e, audio

Source: Advance PB supplied by Orbit

ISBN: 9780356512242

I'm grateful to Orbit for a free advance copy of Chaos Vector.

Following Velocity Weapon, with Chaos Vector O'Keefe takes us further into the twisted world of The Protectorate. 

Further meaning both deeper and higher.

Deeper, because while the first book focussed on a relatively straightforward rebellion in a remote system, where the planet of Icarion was challenging the local leadership of the galaxy-spanning Prime government, Chaos Vector goes beyond that conflict, revealing more about the hidden forces which have been shaping the destiny of Prime. 

Higher, because even beyond those shady figures in the background, there are greater powers at work. O'Keefe's writing is like a constantly revealed map, with each new unfold opening fresh perspectives on what went before, showing things that seemed close together as distinct and offering new symbols and features to fit into the pattern.

We begin, as in Velocity Weapon, with Major Sanda Greeve. All she ever wanted to do was to defend Prime, to protect her brother, Keeper Biran. Yet after her gunship was destroyed at the battle of Dralee, everything went wrong. She's been kidnapped by a rogue AI, put on trial for piracy by Icarion, experimented on, spaced by a traitor Keeper and - now - framed for said Keeper's murder. Sanda is pretty cross and is searching for the truth. 

Probably a bad move, as the hard-bitten gang of Grotta outcasts comprising Jules, Now and Arden discovered for themselves in the previous book when they raided the wrong warehouse for the drug Wraith and poked their noses into the wrong places in that wrong warehouse. Now they're scattered and in hiding.

We saw these two threads of story evolve in parallel throughout Velocity Weapon but not come together and I think this was a brave decision by O'Keefe, allowing each strand to develop at the right pace rather than forcing things together too early. It's not too much of a spoiler (I hope) to say that in Chaos Vector, they finally merge, as Sanda gets command of a ship again and forms her own strange but effective crew, fit to discover the weird corners of this universe. The strange gates that link distant systems. The unknown, powerful military forces that seem to have infiltrated Prime itself. The far-flung research stations pursuing knowledge that Prime forbids. It all takes off here, but to Sanda's frustration she's not free to pursue her own vendetta, but has responsibilities thrust on her - for Prime, for the Keepers and, of course, for her brother Biran. While he fights his own bureaucratic battle in conference chambers and over score links - trying to put out the fire that Icarion lit in the first book - Sanda follows a trail of breadcrumbs halfway across the galaxy.

This is a fast-moving adventure, full of epic battles, treachery, sudden reverses and above all, secrets. EVERYONE here is hiding things and the details are revealed slowly and sparingly - trust is in short supply. The real tension is not only, or not primarily, from physical conflict (although there are moments of high adrenalin conflict you have to read over and again just to be sure you got them right) but from the emotional drumbeat, the rhythm of the story, as all that is dependable, sure, and safe falls away leaving survival to the quick wits and desperate gambles of Sanda, Tomas, Biran and the rest.

If you thought at the end of Book 1 that you were beginning to understand what was going on, you'll soon realise you don't. And while a great deal is clearer by the end of Book 2, I'll guarantee that there are more surprises and twists in store in the next one - which is fine by me, I just need to get my hands on it!

Following up with the second in a series is a tricky thing to do, with the need to offer more of the same while also adding in the new, prompting the reader on what happened in the first part without too much recapping, and offering enough of a self-contained story to satisfy those strange creatures (I am sometimes one myself) who read individual volumes as standalones. O'Keefe succeeds with aplomb, delivering an intelligent space opera with compelling and flawed characters working their way through a messy, shady world where nothing is as it seems... just perfect SF really.

For more information about Chaos Vector, see the Orbit website here.

Review - The Light Years by RWW Greene

The Light Years
RWW Greene
Angry Robot, 11 February 2020
PB, 327pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing a free advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

The Light Years is a slightly different take on science fiction. Focussing on two central characters, Hisako Saski and Adem Sadiq, who are contracted by their parents to marry. The twist is that while Adem, a young man in his 20s, is aware of the deal (even if he didn't actually seek it), Hisako isn't even born yet.

What evens things up is special relativity. Adem's family make their living aboard a trader starship, able to travel every close to the speed of light. A few months spent aboard for him is equivalent to ten or twenty years for those left behind. This is the truth of relativity, a branch of physics often conveniently ignored in SF. Here, it's a cornerstone of the plot. For Adem and Hisako, it means that by the time he's returned from his latest trip, she has been born, gone through childhood, adolescence, taken her degree at university, fallen in and out of love, formed a band (and left it) and much more.

And she's learned what her contracted fate is. She must marry Adem - the bargain ensuring life, she would have literally been illegal otherwise under the strict birth control laws of her homeward - and remain married for two years. There are no other obligations, yet understandably, Hisako resents Adem and she resents the choices her parents made on her behalf.

On the whole, Greene explores this situation - for both Adem and Hisako - with tact and empathy, allowing his characters to breathe and to drive what subsequently happens. Portraying Hisako is more difficult, obviously, because the book covers more than 20 years of her life and they are turbulent years, years of development and change. Understandably, not a great deal happens to Adem in the few months of his life before the wedding. It's frustrating that Hisako's life over the corresponding period has to be represented by individual episodes showing her as a young girl, at high school, and then as a somewhat stroppy teenager. These scenes have to do a great deal of work in showing Hisako grow up and I was impressed that Greene manages to do this so well given the am out that couldn't be shown. It would have been perfectly reasonable to give Hisako a whole book and Adem a few pages at the end, really.

Another main theme here is the unequal, far-future society in which Hisako, Adem and their parents live. There are stark disparities between rich and poor, no sign of democracy and many unregistered, indeed illegal, "refugees" who, if they are lucky, end up in shanty towns such as "la Merde", if unlucky, frozen forever in stasis posts or trafficked virtually as slaves. It becomes clear that these "refugees", like everybody else, have fled Earth before it was destroyed in a solar flare, sealed I those pods. The fortunes of humanity depended very much on who arrived first and who arrived where - this, of course, being influenced by their position and wealth n the first place. They result is a society scattered across several planets where a war of all against all is vigorously fought.

Key to the future of the remaining colonies is the most technology of Earth, embodied in the ancient starships, various drifting wrecks and in scattered instances of the dead cultures and societies that created it. The goal of many - including Adem's parents - is to get themselves a piece of that knowledge. That part of the plot didn't, for me, motivate quite so much as the simple, touching plight of the two young people and their need to navigate their complex society.

This is a refreshingly intelligent SF story, with few bangs and zaps (indeed the only real section of combat occurs in an immersive simulation which Hisako plays - learning as she does how much propaganda and hate there is against the inhabitants of "la Merde"). Rather, problems are solved by courage, intelligence and negotiation, the chief obstacles being lack of trust and lack of knowledge.

Its perhaps then not for everyone but I found it an excellent read and once I began, it pretty much didn't leave my hands till I was finished.

For more information about The Light Years, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds

Bone Silence (Revenger, 3)

Cover design www.blacksheep-uk.com

Alastair Reynolds
Gollancz, 30 January 2020
HB, e, 602pp

I'm grateful to Gollancz for a free advance copy of Bone Silence.

The final part of the Revenger trilogy (after Shadow Captain), Bone Silence returns to the universe of Captains Arafura and Adrana Ness. In this far-future solar system, the planets themselves have been dismantled, yielding the material for the construction of tens of thousands of "worlds" - habitable structures a few kilometres across, built in all shapes and sizes (discs, spheres, spindles...) This is where humanity lives now, although civilisation has waxed and waned, with thirteen distinct "Occupations" - phases when people were expanding and settling. The history of this is mysterious, with plenty of powerful artifacts to be recovered from abandoned "baubles".

In this setting the Ness sisters - two young women who ran away from home world Mazarile seeking adventure, but found piracy, fighting and death with Fura ultimately rescuing Adrana from captivity - now scour the spacelanes in their ship the sunjammer Revenger, captured from the dread pirate Bosa Sennen. Unfortunately a bounty has been set on their heads, and they're pursued by a squadron of the Congregation's most ruthless thief takers who believe they are in league with Sennen, or perhaps that they are Sennen (it's complicated).

I love the setting for these books. In Reynolds' hands, the manoeuvrings of the great sail-driven craft, the hazards of calling at unruly and fractious port world, the glory a of a fight, the the salty language, and above all the loot up there for the taking - for me all these evoke the never-was pirate-ridden world of Stevenson and Robinson Crusoe. It's an advanced world with advanced tech but all the familiar themes are there - the long pursuits, the scanning for sight of a sail, the ferocious broadsides (here, delivered with electromagnetic coil guns). And the crew members we meet wouldn't be out of place lurking in a corner of the Admiral Benbow.

If that was all these books had, they might be fun, but no more than a jeu d'esprit (albeit a good one) on Reynolds' part. But there's much, much more than that. Under the surface of this book are serious SF themes: the fate of humanity in the far future, the origins of civilisations, our relationship with alien races. And big human themes: the sisters are coming of age, finding their place in this strange universe, making friends (and enemies) and losing them. Those themes are explored rather more thoroughly in this book than in the previous ones, the Ness sisters having now found one another and constructed some form of relationship again after the traumas they suffered before.

Indeed, solving these mysteries has become more than a matter of casual curiosity. Fura and Adrana have now become convinced that it's key not only to the future of the human race but to their own more immediate survival. There's also a desperation to this book that marks it out from the others. We have had hints before that outside forces may be manipulating events but here it seems there are two sides, rival factions of aliens pursuing some conflict and bringing an even tighter sense of danger to events. It's not clear who can be trusted, or even what is to be gained from those can.

Bone Silence felt to me more focused, basically an extended chase sequence, than the earlier books, and more sober: the sisters are growing up, there's less sheer exuberance and a greater awareness of consequences (as when someone who lost money because of what Fura and Adrana did at the end of the last book plunges to his death. before their eyes). The stakes are higher now - it's not just a question of being dragged back home, and they have enemies with deep pockets and an even longer reach. There is an edge to the battles, a sense of the gloves being off.

It is, though, not all action. I enjoyed the shipboard sections when nothing much seemed to be going on, but the two sisters - and their ragged crew - were learning to trust each other. There are many, many reasons why they wouldn't, and Revenger herself holds dark memories, especially for Adrana. Shudder at what went on in the "kindness room"! Revisit the Bone Room, where the twinkling, alien skull allows communication - at a price - across great distances. In this book the process carries a more deadly edge than ever - there is the prospect of discovery for one thing, and other, darker dangers as well. (The exact origin and nature of the bones and the "twinkly" inside them is never made clear: like many aspects of the Revenger universe, that remains a dark secret, perhaps to be revealed one day, perhaps not). And Reynolds' portrayals of the crewmen and women are rounded and fully formed.

All in all great fun, though this is one trilogy you really do need to read in order.

For more about Bone Silence, and to buy the book, see the Gollancz website here.

Alastair Reynolds' website is here.

Review - Velocity Weapon by Megan E O'Keefe

Velocity Weapon
Megan E O'Keefe
Orbit, 13 June 2019
PB, 505pp

"The last thing Sanda remembers is her gunship exploding..."

I'm grateful to the ever awesome Nazia at Orbit for a free advance copy of Velocity Weapon.

Debut author O'Keefe's novel is a proper serving of space opera - a genre I don't read regularly, but when I do, it has to be just right. And this is. We have a space war, political machinations, galaxy spanning civilisation, futuristic technologies, a doomsday weapon, and a nagging feeling that someone we can't see is pulling the strings. All smoothly written, with pace and verve - and more to come.

When Sergeant Sanda Greeve wakes in a survival pod after the disastrous battle of Dralee, any joy at her survival is soon tempered as she's told it has been hundreds of years since Dralee. Both her homeworld and Iscariot, planet of her enemies, have been destroyed by Iscarion's new planet-busting weapon, along with her family, and she's now stranded on an enemy ship. The Light of Berossus, the only human left alive in the system.  The Light - or Bero, as he prefers to be known - is himself a character in the person of a brooding AI who welcomes Sanda (as well he might after so many years alone). But as she explores the ship and begins to discover what went on there, she has to question what he knows - and what he did...

Between chapters detailing Sanda's discoveries in the year 3771, the book follows her brother, Biran, in 3541 - the time of the battle itself. Biran has just passed out as a Keeper, one of the ruling class of his planet. Keepers are implanted with chips containing the plans for the Casimir Gates that link humanity's colonies in disparate start systems, and they also direct affairs on those colonies. Believing Sanda to be marooned in her survival pod, Biran is about to risk a great deal for her.

There is also a third strand - a heist organised by a group of criminals led by Jules, on another, unidentified, colony world. This might risk breaking the flow of the other two narratives, but O'Keefe's writing and plotting easily makes Jules' adventures absorbing in themselves, not least as she uses them to feed us additional information about the doings of the Keepers. In a neat contrast to Biran's high-mindedness, Jules seems pretty much amoral - she just wants to get a break, and claw her way up from the bad side of town. But the existence of that bad side and the way that people like her are treated does rather undermine the glittering vision of future society that Biran holds. How this will play out in future volumes remains to be seen but I think the idealism of Keeper society may actually mask some dark secrets.

The story itself was a joy to read. O'Keefe's writing is, as I said above, always compelling and the story itself moves along at a rattling pace with many surprises, reversals and twists (even as the seeds are planted for a much bigger story than a squabble in a remote system). The book may not be groundbreaking, but in giving Sanda a leg damaged in battle O'Keefe places a character with a disability centre stage (and gives the book overtones of Treasure Island) and she also has the original of her spacefaring civilisation be Ecuador, not the US, Russia or China, making it a little different. Spending time with Gunnery Sergeant Sanda Greeve is fun - she is a protagonist with a lot of whoomph, rather overshadowing comms specialist Tomas and indeed, little brother Biran.

I would strongly recommend this book - and am looking forward to its sequels.

For an extract from Velocity Weapon, see the Orbit website here.

Review - Morhelion by Dominic Dulley

Cover design by www.headdesign.co.uk

Morhelion (The Long Game, 2)
Dominic Dulley
Jo Fletcher Books, 4 April 2019
PB, 436pp

I'm grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for a free advance copy of Morhelion.

Morhelion returns to the universe Dulley created in Shattermoon. Aurelia "Orry" Kent is one of a team of grifters, comprising her, the enigmatic Mender and her teenage brother, Ethan. Oh, and Mender's sentient starship, Dainty Jane. In Shattermoon, Orr and Ethan survived the death of their father and the loss of their previous ship, Bonaventure, and took up with Mender. They a,so earned the gratitude of the Emperor of the galactic Ascendancy and witnessed a war begin with the alien Kadiran.

In Morhelion we first see Orry and the gang doing what they do best - running a scam (these books really are like Hustle in space). Inevitably, things go wrong, and the story soon spins off into a series of fast-paced escapades involving spies, aliens, space Leviathans and some truly seamy characters. There's a slight Wild West atmosphere to the planet of Morhelion where isolated, bubble-enclosed communities floating above the gas giant mostly seem to host junkyards, dodgy lawmen and even dodgier saloons.But also a serious theme as the planet's main trade is in slaughtering those endangered - and sentient - Leviathans, rather proving Orry's point that the Ascendancy is rotten and uncaring.

It's an intensely enjoyable book, pretty much action filled and always very readable - Dulley has a genius for getting Orry & Co into a tight spot and then providing an audacious way out. Audacious, but never downright unbelievable, given the care with which he's portrayed Orry as resourceful, brave and quick-witted. She is a well-rounded protagonist, a couple of the villains here perhaps a bit cartoonish in comparison (unlike the magnificent Roag in Shattermoon). And there are some great one-liners in this book besides.

Morhelion is very much not hard SF - if you want a universe of buccaneering, laser battles and sculduggery without troubling too much over the speed of light, energy or distances, then Morhelion will be for you - that's not to say it's hand waving, Dulley accounts for everything that needs to be, but the book is focussed on the characters, not making the tech plausible. Which is fine by me - I'd rather he made, say, the scamming of a rich banker plausible that worry about hyperspace.

So, a good read, and I hope there are more adventures coming along for Orry and her mates.

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.

Review - Deep Blue by Jane O'Reilly

Cover design by www.nickcastledesign.com

Deep Blue (Second Species, 2)
Jane O'Reilly
Piatkus, 10 January 2019
PB, 310pp

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

Deep Blue picks up the story of Jinnifer Blue, space pirate and daughter of Senator Ferona Blue, in a pacy space opera set two centuries hence. Earth is in trouble, after overcorrections for global warming bring on a freeze that is destroying life. To survive, humans must relocate to a distant planet - but this will involve travelling through alien controlled space.

Fortunately, Ferona has a plan to bribe the aliens by trafficking them genetically altered men and women. She's ruthless enough to subject her own daughter to the process, and so we find Jinnifer endowed with superhuman strength - and other talents - fighting back against her mother, seeking to rescue her lover, Caspian Dax, currently fighting for his life in the arena of Sittan.

This is a story with great pace and drive. It reads as though O'Reilly had a lot of fun creating it, and lives and breathes through its characters - burdened as they are with loves and hatreds, guilt, fears and all the baggage of being brought up in the hellish underworlds that exist below every Earth city.

I wouldn't recommend it to diehard fans of hard SF - at least not the picky sort, you shouldn't be reading this if you care about the practicalities of explosions in space, or of actual space travel - but if what you're interested in is a good story driven by plausible characters (and with a nice streak of romance too) all set against a glittery backdrop of stars, phase drives and deeply bizarre aliens, then it may just be for you. You do though need to read the first book - Blue Shift, reviewed here - first and ideally go straight on to this one.

As with the first book, O'Reilly leaves things hanging on a cliffedge, Jinn's swashbuckling and her mother's political scheming evolving in parallel, and that sets things up for an explosive finale to which I'm really looking forward.

Review - The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts

Cover by Elizabeth Story

The Freeze-Frame Revolution
Peter Watts
Tachyon Publications, 28 June 2018
PB/ e, 192pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

The Freeze-Frame Revolution is a science fiction story, reaching into the far future. The far, far future - it ends some sixty million years from now (give or take a million or ten). Hence the title: Sunday Ahzmundin, our protagonist, is one of a 30, 000 humans carried aboard the Eriophora, a repurposed asteroid (I think) adapted as a space vessel and launched on a spectacular mission, planned to last into deep time.

As such, the Eriophora is operated from day to day by an artificial intelligence, referred to throughout as Chimp. Humans are stored in deep hibernation and only awakened, for a few hours or days, when their particular skills are needed for "the Mission". Thus they do not age appreciably, even as the world they have left behind - and the universe around them - evolve inexorably.

With this set-up, Watts seems to have created an inseparable barrier to any kind of linear narrative. Sunday is revived to assist with occasional "builds", some of them thousands of year ahead, and we begin to see... something... paying an interest to the rock as it performs its physics voodoo and spits out artificial black holes behind it. But the nature of the "gremlins" that seem to be following is obscure, and information about them relayed only indirectly.

Similarly, as some of the other characters seem to be developing doubts about "the Mission" (we learn that everyone aboard was brought up from childhood to take part, and we suspect there may have been even earlier modifications to them) it's hard to see how they can lead to anything more than stray remarks, centuries apart, in the margins of "builds' or as the crew wind down afterwards before being sent back to the "crypt".

Yet despite these constraints, Watts manages to spin a compelling narrative, albeit one that requires the reader to stay sharp and pick up hints from the text. I didn't find this difficult, this (admittedly short) book is one of those that whizzes along, almost demanding to be read in a sitting. (If you are worried about the hard science overtones and physics stuff making that difficult, don't be - just focus on the central point, this ship is basically a floating factory for making black holes and wormholes).

It is though more than just a whizzy SF plot, there is a lot here to think about. I spotted overtones of 2001 in Chimp's enthusiasm for the Mission and their general benign - or is it? - affect, which were very pertinent given the nature of that mission (establishing wormhole powered gates allowing for jumps across spacetime; not actually black monoliths, but, you know...) I also found Sunday's moral dilemma with regard to Chimp and to her fellow humans plausible, as well as the impossible position of the entire crew, seemingly the last humans in the universe.

Altogether then, an enjoyable and fun SF read and one with some genuine surprises for me.

For more about the book, see the Tachyon website here.