Raven Stratagem - Yoon Ha Lee

One of the most exciting novels I read last year was Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit. It offered fast-paced space opera combined with a strange mathematical system that governs space travel, and society. Between the action, Lee has a thing or two to say about totalitarian states and oppression as well. Ninefox Gambit is the opening volume in his Machineries of Empire trilogy. The second book, Raven Stratagem, was released this month. This sequel pick up the story directly after the end of the first novel, but takes a slightly different approach. One would almost say a more conventional one.

General Jedao, long dead military genius and war criminal, has been set loose on the universe again. With the Hexarchie threatened by the Hafn, there is a job to do. But Jedao is dangerously unstable, unpredictable and not adverse to killing large numbers of people. When he takes over a fleet of spaceships, the Hexarchs get worried. Jedao is quickly outlawed but that doesn't break his command over the fleet. With an external enemy ready to strike, an internal conflict reaching a boiling point and a rogue general on the loose, it is hard to see how the conflict can be resolved without massive loss of life. Nevertheless, some parties are trying to achieve just that.

Raven Stratagem is not as heavy on space battles as its predecessor. There are a few to be sure, but most of the book deals with political manoeuvring. Where the reader gets thrown into the middle of the story in Ninefox Gambit, in this book we get to see much more of the political structure of the empire. It is a system everybody involved feels is rotten to the core. Every generation it becomes crueller, more violent and less tolerant. It takes more and more effort to keep within the narrow boundaries of calendrical orthodoxy. It is an empire rapidly approaching the breaking point.

One of the more interesting aspects of the novel is that most of the faction leaders seem to be perfectly aware of the weakness of the empire and its slow, long descent into madness. Most of them are not prepared to change the tiniest bit in face of this problem. Keeping their position is more important. To raise the stakes a bit further, the novel explores immortality. It is within reach for Hexarchy elite. The price for society as a whole, would be considerable though. Imagine having your leadership staying in place for centuries, slowly going mad, without even the possibility that at some point they will snuff it and let someone else have a go. The hexarchs are not a cheery bunch, that's for sure.

Most of the story was told from Cheris' point of view in the previous novel. In Raven Stratagem, Jedao/Cheris is not a point of view character. We get to see quite a lot of the general through the eyes of others though. Lee cleverly uses other points of view to show us what formation instinct, an effect of the calendrical system that ensures loyalty in the Kel soldiers, works on an individual scale. Loyalty, it would appear, is more complex than the mathematician who designed the calendar seems to have imagined.

What has remained constant in these books is the oppressive nature of the society Lee describes. The almost casual way in which populations are subjected to horrible violence for even the minutest deviation from the norm is terrifying. More than once characters mention how they do not relish having to kill large numbers of people, but do so anyway. They seem to think their actions are inevitable, even when faced with the evidence of the flaws in the system. Part of the machine that somehow robs them of initiative and absolves them of personal responsibility. Lee's parting shot in this novel is particularly poignant in that light.

The pace of the novel is perhaps a tad lower than the first book in the series. Apart from taking the time to show the reader a bit more of the hexarchate, Lee is also building up for the third volume. I wouldn't go so far as to say the novel suffers from middle book syndrome however, it has a strong story arc and definite climax of its own. It is clear that there is more to come though. One thing I wondered about at the end of the novel is the circular nature of the calendar, and what that implies for the future of the empire.

All things considered, Raven Stratagem is a worthy successor to Ninefox Gambit. It is fast and lean space opera. A dark and grim story. The kind of novel that does not coddle the reader, but challenges to look beyond the explosions and window dressing, and explore such themes as the dark side of human social structures, and the meaning of loyalty and humanity in the face of immortality. This trilogy is looking better and better. I already look forward to the third volume.

Book Details
Title: Raven Stratagem
Author: Yoon Ha Lee
Publisher: Solaris
Pages: unknown
Year: 2017
Language: English
Format: E-ARC
ISBN: 978-1-78618-046-9
First published: 2017

Drowned Worlds - Jonathan Strahan

Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond is an anthology recently released by Solaris. Editor Jonathan Strahan mentioned in the introduction how he recently read J. G. Ballard's classic The Drowned World (1962). I haven't read that book myself but from what I can tell it looks both prophetic and dated. Ballard didn't seem to believe humanity could influence the temperature on Earth. The greenhouse effect was known as early as the 19th century and in the 1950s and 1960s scientists did start to get worried. Not until the 1970s did the idea that the earth was warming because of anthropogenic emission really take hold though. Strahan continued his post-apocalyptic reading with Kim Stanley Robinson and Paul McAuley among others. Soon an anthology was beginning to take shape.

The collection contains fifteen stories, all of them original with the exception of Kim Stanley Robinson's Venice Drowned. This story was published in 1981. In a way the premise is depressing. The anthropocene to which the subtitle of the anthology refers is a proposed geological era to follow the Holocene. An era in which human activity has a profound impact on the Earth's geology, climate and ecology. An era of rapid change and mass extinction. An era that, whether or not we label it as the anthropocene, has become inevitable. The stories echo that realization. They show us flooded Earths with humanity scrambling to adapt, or far futures in which the remnants of our society make our descendants shake their heads at our hubris. The whole anthology displays a kind of resignation that is more than a bit worrying.

Strahan in his introduction puts it like this:

We are, it has become clear, living in the Anthropocene, that time when human actions start to have significant impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. It is a time of darkness and disaster, and it’s a time we have to face, to confront, and to combat. There will be triumphs among the disasters, humanity among the apocalypse, and those are the stories that could appear in the right book. And my editor agreed, and so the book you are now holding was born.

In doing so, he raised expectations the anthology doesn't live up to. Many stories use some form of drowned world as a backdrop without really engaging thematically with it. Which was what I was hoping to find more of.

As such I didn't really feel it was a great anthology. Individually there are some good stories in it though. Robinson's story Venice Drowned is interesting for fans of his novels. When it was first published it would be another three years until his first novel came out.  It is not a very plot oriented story but a scene he would repeat later in his career. A main character more or less on his own, forced by some emergency to really connect with his environment and in doing so overcoming a personal crisis. It reminded me in particular of Sax' adventure after losing sight of his vehicle during a dust storm on Mars. More recently, Loon, the main character in Shaman is another good example.

Who Do You Love? by Kathleen Ann Goonan is one of the stories I liked. It's a well written tale that combines a love story and a generational conflict with sea level rise, coral bleaching and a desperate attempt to save some of the riches of the Caribbean coral reefs. I liked Goonan's use of different points of view in particular. Another strong story is The Common Tongue, the Present Tense, the Known by Nina Allan. It may well be the best story in the anthology. It's a story about the friendship between two women in a post apocalyptic world. One still has one foot in the old world, thinking back on the past and her uncle's research. The other seems to have embraced the present world as it is, although that might be to push away past traumatic experiences. Some fine characterization in this story. It is emotionally powerful too.

The last story I want to mention is the final one in the anthology. The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente is probably the most depressing story in the anthology. It is set in a floating isle of garbage on one of the world's much enlarged oceans. The story is about hope but also disillusionment. The main character is unfortunate enough to figure out the state of the world. Where the great garbage patch as a whole likes to pretend everything will go back to normal at some point, she knows this is not the case. A better parallel for what our society is doing at the moment one could scarcely imagine. Maybe Strahan put it at the end of the anthology to leave us with a warning of what the consequences of ignoring the obvious might be.

All in all Drowned Worlds contained many more forgettable stories than memorable ones. As such I was mildly disappointed with it. There are too many stories that only superficially deal with the chosen theme. It turns the anthology into a parade of half-hearted images of what sea level rise might look like, overlaid with decent but not special plots. One can't help but wonder if the anthology wouldn't have benefited from a slightly wider theme, if only to make it a bit more varied. But even with a narrow theme I can't help but feel there ought to be a better selection out there.

Book Details
Title: Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond
Editor: Jonathan Strahan
Publisher: Solaris
Pages: 289
Year: 2016
Language: English
Format: E-ARC
ISBN: 978-1-84997-930-6
First published: 2016

Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee

Ninefox Gambit is the first of three novels in The Machineries of Empire series. It is Lee's début in the long form. He  has several dozen short stories in the past fifteen years though, a selection of which can be found in the collection Conservation of Shadows (2013). Lee's work shifts between fantasy and science fiction. There are magical and mythological elements but also a fondness of mathematics and far future narratives present in his stories. I know of one other story set in the same universe as Ninefox Gambit. The Battle of Candle Arc (2012)  is set centuries before the novel but features one of the characters in this book. The story is included in the aforementioned collection. The publication of Ninefox Gambit casts the story notes at the back of Conservation of Shadows in a different light.

In a far future the Hexarchate rules over a vast volume of space. Their powers is based on calendriacal mathematics. It allows them to shape reality but only works in very specific circumstances. The calendar is a religion, one guarded by ritual torture and endless warfare to crush heresy. Captain Kel Cheris is one of the soldiers ensuring the unity of the empire. She has a talent for mathematics that makes her both dangerous and useful to the hexarchate. Cheris is recalled after a mission and asked to file a plan to retake a strategically important fortress fallen into the hands of a new heretical movement. Cheris sees no other option than to request the aid of general Jedao, the empires most brilliant general and its worst traitor. Jedao is a dangerous weapon to use, as Cheris will find out when trying to retake the fortress.

Ninefox Gambit is pure space opera. It is set in a far future, on the largest possible canvas. There are powerful space ships, huge battles and strange technologies made possible by copious amounts of handwavium. It took me a while to figure out the internal logic of the novel but once that falls into place it quickly becomes clear the characters are playing for high stakes. It's a fast, exciting, and action packed plot. A Hollywood CGI company would have a field day recreating some of the battle scenes. There is a bit more to the novel than just big explosions however.

In my review of Conservation of Shadows I said some of the characters reminded me a bit of Frank Herbert's characters. Particularly the ones in the final two Dune novels, where quite a few characters can fall back on the wisdom and experience from generations past. The ancient general Cheris is using for her mission has long since been executed. He is brought back very infrequently. On very few occasions the gain outweighs the risk of letting him loose on the universe. They release him by attaching him to another character. He does not, in other words, have a body of his own. For the moment he is stuck with Cheris, who is the only one who can communicate with him directly.

Lee makes good use of this lopsided relationship in the novel. A brilliant general with centuries of experience and a reputation for being unpredictable and more than a little mad, ought to be in the driving seat when dealing with a captain bumped up to general, used to obeying and very much out of her element. Cheris has one skill Jedao lacks however. It is not very apparent in most of this novel, but I suspect it will be important in future books. There is a good balance in the novel between the immediate demands of present developments and the interplay between these characters and their clashing agendas.

In the background of the novel there is another element that will probably run through the entire trilogy. The state Lee describes is a totalitarian one. The power of the calendrical mathematics is great but also results in a lot of repression. As the title of the series suggests, it is a machine crushing the individual who steps outside the narrow boundaries acceptable to the hexarchate. The machine of the state devours heretics but is not too careful with its Kel, the soldiers of the empire, either. It instils a scary kind of fanaticism in its soldiers. A good Kel soldier will die rather than disrupt the formation. Formations, much like society, need to stay within very narrowly defined boundaries to reap the benefits of the calendrical system. It's gleichschaltung on a frightening scale.

The system is also very inflexible and surprisingly vulnerable. The mathematics behind it, is only fully understood by one of the leaders of the six factions that make up the hexarchate. Heresy rears its head with depressing frequency and the empire seems to have external as well as internal enemies. Cheris, doesn't know half of this at the opening of the novel and completely accepts this situation. Obedience is drilled into her by the Kel after all. Her changing attitude during the novel is a fine bit of character building.

Ninefox Gambit is very much the setup for a series. It ends at a natural point in the story but it also leaves many questions unanswered. It is a book that is very hard to rate until the shape of the overall story becomes known. I enjoyed reading it a lot tough and I think the series has great potential. Lee balances a fast paced story with enough reflections on power and characterization to make it an intriguing read. He does all of this in a fairly concise novel. Where some space opera is bloated to epic fantasy proportions, Lee keeps the page count reasonable. This novel may well be the start of something special. I look forward to reading the second volume.

Book Details
Title: Ninefox Gambit
Author: Yoon Ha Lee
Publisher: Solaris
Pages: 259
Year: 2016
Language: English
Format: E-ARC
ISBN: 978-1-84997-992-4
First published: 2016

Talus and the Frozen King - Graham Edwards

I've been reading quite a bit of prehistoric fiction recently  (The Shelters of Stone, Shaman, The Reindeer People),  so when I was offered a review copy of Graham Edwards' Talus and the Frozen King I figured this one would fit right in. Edwards has published a number of fantasy novels under his own name, and more recently, two crime novels as Nick Curtis. I haven't read any of them but it would appear that in this novel he tries to bring these genres together. In this book Edwards introduces 'the worlds first detective.'

On their long track north, in search of the place where the northern light touches the sky, the bard Talus and his traveling companion Bran arrive at the island of Creyak. They arrive at an unfortunate time, the king of the island has just been found dead and strangers are not welcome on the island at the best of times. What is worse, it is immediately apparent to Talus that the kind did not die a natural death. Despite the hostility of some of the islanders, he sets himself the task of unravelling the mystery of the king's death.

Edwards has clearly done quite a bit of research on this book but it is also blatantly obvious he doesn't let his research get in the way of a good story. From what he describes it is almost impossible to date the story or pin down where it is set. The settlement Edwards describes is inspired by the neolithic site of Skara Brae on Mainland, the largest of the Orkney isles. I get the feeling the rest of the description of the island doesn't match however. That particular site was occupied from about 3200 BC, but Edwards states on his site that the story is set a bit earlier. That clashes with the reference to 'the stepped tombs in a distant desert land.' Which, if they are referring to ancient Egyptian monuments, seems to imply that the story is set in the 28th or 27th century BC. Then there is a reference to 'the cairns of the jungle realms that lie far to the west, over the sea', which can't really be placed in this time period at all. In short, Edwards does not strive for historical accuracy as much as tries to evoke a certain atmosphere in his novels.

That atmosphere is certainly there. The landscape he describes is cold and misty. A rocky icebound island, hiding the signs of centuries of habitation. It feels already old in the early stages of what we consider civilization. A place ruled by fear and distrust, illuminated by the eerie aurora that attracts the main characters. It's an almost otherworldly setting. I also got the feeling that is was set a little further north than the Orkney's but again, Edwards is not very precise in this respect.

At the core, the story is a mystery. Talus must find the killer without the aid of forensics or any sort of judicial system. He needs to tie the evidence together with what he learns from the people on the island. It is as much a matter of gaining insight into what drives the people he talks to as much as looking at the physical evidence. Not that Talus discards this altogether. He quickly figures out the killer is left-handed for instance. Despite his modest means, Talus is quite a skilled investigator.

I guess you could say is molded after the classic great detectives. He is a very observant man, good at spotting detail and fitting it into a bigger picture. He is also, how shall I put is, not an easy man to be around. He doesn't always have patience with those unable to follow the leaps in his thinking and often can't be bothered to explain. A trait that gets him in dangerous situations more than once. Fortunately, his gift for words is such that he can usually talk himself out of it. For the people around him, and to an extent for the reader, Talus is a bit of a trail. More than once, his motivations do not become clear until he explains them later on in the story.

The mystery Talus is trying to unravels starts small but quickly spreads. The murder of the king is the pinnacle of a much larger conflict within the community and even involving another local settlement. As strangers, Bran and Talus peel back layer after layer of conflict, strife, discontent and jealousy in order to find the truth. The inner workings of an essentially isolated community where one man with a strong arm and a forceful personality can make his subjects do his biding are slowly revealed to the reader. The pacing is well handled but one thing that did bother me about the plot was that there seemed to be very little in the way of laws and customs regarding crime and punishment within the community. Somehow that strikes me as unlikely.

As a mystery I don't think it is the best I've ever read. Talus needs to do a bit too much explaining for the whole thing to make sense. That being said, the novel is a quick and entertaining read. Not heavy on history or bogged down by archaeologic detail, Edwards keeps the story going at a brisk pace. The mystery set before the reader in the opening chapters is fully resolved by the end of it but Talus and Bran clearly have a past and from what we get to see of it, I would be surprised if Edwards meant to keep it to a single volume. Talus and the Frozen King is an entertaining read that offers plenty of opportunities for further adventures. I for one, wouldn't mind seeing another one of these come my way.

Book Details
Title: Talus and the Frozen King
Author: Graham Edwards
Publisher: Solaris
Pages: 336
Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: E-book
ISBN: 978-1-84997-664-0
First published: 2014

Shine - Jetse de Vries

Shine is a collection of near-future, optimistic SF stories, of which there are too few according to the editor. And indeed, as de Vries suggests in his introduction, I would be hard pressed to come up with a list of positive near-future works. I guess one of the few science fiction authors who seems to have a consistently positive view on the future is Kim Stanley Robinson. Personally, I am not all that optimistic and that basically has to do with my education. I studied environmental science for eight years and while it is a fascinating field, it also has the side effect of showing you in just how many ways we are sending this world to hell in a handbasket. It teaches you to see the signs in your own local environment, it teaches you how easy it is to not really solve an environmental problem but shift is somewhere else and it teaches you how our current economic system suffers from the delusion that a habitable environment is for free. One only needs to look at the rather pathetic attempt to reach an agreement on saving what is left of the Blue Fin Tuna stock in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic last month to see what rapid strides we are making to a more sustainable world.

No, I am by no means optimistic about the (near) future but that doesn't mean people aren't trying or that there is no way we are going to avoid one of those apocalypses the genre is so fond of. De Vries has taken on quite a challenge to find stories that meet his criteria on content and quality. He describes his efforts as editor as evil in several places in the collection and if he indeed shares the directness the Dutch seem to prefer it would be a miracle if not at least some of the authors in this collection agreed with that. It has resulted in a good and pretty diverse collection of stories though, I guess de Vries should be evil some more.

Shine contains sixteen pieces of short fiction, I am going to mention a couple that made the biggest impact. The opening story, The Earth of Yunhe by Eric Gregory is a strong one. It's one of the stories with an environmental theme. Not all of them do, the introduction is about my particular bias, not that of the authors or editors. Gregory weaves a very interesting tale of a displaced people, conflict within a family and nanotechnology. What I particularly liked about this story is the way the author manges to capture such a complex theme as the conflicts arising within a community of displaced people in one family. Do you resign yourself to finding your place in your new environment or try to reclaim what was lost? And what if technology allows you to reclaim but politics won't?

A second story I want to mention is Twittering the Stars by Mari Ness. De Vries is apparently a big fan Twitter. He mentions the medium a number of times in the introductions to the various stories. I'm not a great fan my self, I will sacrifice knowing things now to knowing them in a bit more detail at a time of my own choosing but you can't deny it's popularity. Ness wrote a story that is completely conveyed in the form of Tweets and starts with the newest message at the top. The story is that of a space ship returning to earth after visiting the asteroid belt. Clearly something has going wrong en route and we gradually work our way back to the point where we find out what. This story can be read in the reverse order as well and that makes it pretty unusual. It's a very interesting and quite succesfull experiment in using such a new medium for literary purposes.

We get more information technology in Scheherazade Cast in Starlight by Jason Andrew. A brief account of how blogging leads to a political change in Iran. It's clearly based on events that took place in that country right after the last elections, where the Internet was instrumental in getting the news about the protests out to the world. This story is more peaceful but only because the main character manages to keep the spotlight on herself. Locking people up or killing them is still a fairly effective way of silencing a dissident. It made me wonder if authoritarian regimes are rethinking their methods of suppressing opposition. Is the Internet really going to help spread democracy?

In Russian Roulette 2020 by Eva Maria Chapman we get to see the downside of all that instant access. People are consumed by the present, constantly in touch and responding to what is happening elsewhere. A group of American technology addicts encounters a Russian school where they live and teach according to a different philosophy. The group does not shun technology but clearly thinks a connection with the land and your community is equally important. It's one of the more spiritual stories in the collection. What I particularly liked about it, is that the contrast the author is trying to create between the two groups does not result in one of them completely ignoring the possibilities of technology. It's about balance. Technology has it's uses as both groups will find out in the story.

The last story I want to mention is Kay Kenyon's Castoff World. The story is about Child and her Grappa floating around on a barge originally intended to clean up the Ocean of pollutants like plastics. The barge has long since lost contact with the people who designed and ran it and it is now floating freely on a dangerous ocean, collecting ever more rubbish. We see the story from Child's perspective. It's a very touching story, I particularly liked the subtle presence of artificial intelligence. Beautifully written. This one is probably my favourite in the entire collection.

I wonder if de Vries knew what he was getting into with this project. It's not as if others hadn't tried before and it is certainly a lot easier to let a negative view of the future get the best of you. The stories in this anthology don't always depict shiny, bright futures but to do all posses a sense of profound positive change, ranging from a very personal level to things that will shift the balance in a nation or even worldwide. The diversity of the stories and the consistently high quality of this collection is testament to his passion for this project. Where some themed anthologies struggle to collect enough stories that fit the scope of the anthology well enough, Shine manages to make one statement out this diversity. It does not propose solutions to the world's problems but it does offer hope that we'll be able to climb out on that handbasket after all. A shining example of what positive thinking can achieve.

Book Details
Title: Shine
Editor: Jetse de Vries
Publisher: Solaris
Pages: 453
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-906735-66-1
First published: 2010