Tag Archives: Scifi

Fleet of Knives–Gareth L Powell

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I put a hand across my mouth. “What are you doing?”

                We act to preserve life.

                “By killing people?”

                By destroying the means to wage war.  Only when war is impossible will life be safe.

                –Conversation between Ona Sudak and the Emissary of the Marble Armada.

***

Source: Review Copy

Publisher: Titan Books

Date of Publication: February 19, 2019

It’s been six months since the events of Embers of War. Ona Sudak, better known as Annelida Deal, “the Butcher of Pelaptarn”, is awaiting execution for war crimes.  As her punishment looms, Deal is violently broken out of prison and brought before the leadership entity of the Marble Armada.  It is hoped by the Conglomeration Authority—whose special operatives have abducted her—that she will be willing to act as an emissary in their name, as the million-ship armada is an unpredictable factor far beyond the technological capabilities of the Conglomeration.  Any conflict with this elemental force is a frightening prospect, hence their desire to exert some sort of influence over it.  Yet it soon becomes clear that neither Deal nor the Armada can be controlled. The Armada has an agenda, one which parallels Annelida Deal’s own desire—to enforce peace throughout the universe, by violence if necessary—and they find it so very necessary. 

Meanwhile, the crew of the Trouble Dog have resumed their vocation as a rescue ship, oblivious to the danger the Marble Armada will soon pose. Their mission—rescue the crew of Lucy’s Ghost, a ship crippled by an unseen force during an illegal salvage operation of an ancient generation ship. Forced to flee Lucy’s Ghost for the relative safety of the relic, the crew soon discover that their refuge is fraught with its own perils. During the course of the mission Trouble Dog and her crew of misfits will find their abilities stretched to the limit, attempting to preserve the lives of the crew of Lucy’s Ghost from an extra-dimensional threat, and their own from the overzealous Fleet of Knives.

***

Fleet of Knives, the second novel in Gareth L. Powell’s “Embers of War” trilogy, consists of three parallel stories: Ona Sudak/Annelida Deal’s ascent to leader of an alien armada of immense power, dealing peace from the barrel of a gun; Sal Konstanz and the crew of the Trouble Dog, attempting to regain their sense of purpose after the events of the previous novel; and that of Johnny Schultz and the crew of Lucy’s Ghost as they deal with both a deadly alien menace and an unexpected addition to their crew.   As in the first instalment, the story is told in short, cinematic chapters, from various character viewpoints, allowing the reader into their minds as they react to the events around them.  It’s a very effective technique that gives the reader an intimate and immediate insight into their motivations.

Once she allies herself with the Marble Armada and sanctions their mission, Ona Sudak has effectively transitioned from the troubled anti-hero of the first novel to a villain on par with the worst in history, and honestly, it wasn’t much of a journey. No longer the troubled leader reluctantly following orders she knows to be criminal in the hope of shortening a war, Sudak becomes a zealot, willing to commit atrocities if she thinks the end result warrants them.   She is so determined to enact her ideology—the idea of “Peace through War”—that she willingly overrides the basic morality limiting our baser instincts.  It’s the “greater good” fallacy zealots tell themselves to excuse their actions. Her principles have become so compromised that she’s willing to have the Armada destroy anything or anyone that might possibly engage in violence—utterly blind to the irony of her actions.

As for Trouble Dog and crew, until Sudak’s actions catch up to them, they spend the novel attempting to heal from their first experience with the Marble Armada, complicated by competing personalities and coping mechanisms.  Sal still doubts her ability to lead her fractured crew, yet pours herself into the rescue mission, fully aware that her crew are all damaged in some form or another. Preston Menderes, their replacement medic, is barely competent, yet striving to become the man he claimed to be while applying for the position.  Nod the mechanic is preoccupied with its own secrets, and Trouble Dog is still contemplating its place in the universe.  Then there’s the tactical officer, Alva Clay.

I really found Alva Clay quite obnoxious in the first novel.  Her disdain for Sal was unwarranted, her attitude entirely unprofessional, and she was an utterly miserable character.  At the time I guessed that it was a result of PTSD, but not really having a concrete explanation besides “War is Hell” made it hard to empathize.  In Fleet of Knives, she’s still miserable, but Powell deftly explains why with a brief mention of the daughter and husband she lost during the war and how she cannot move past her grief.  He then gives her a redemptive moment near the climax of the novel, absolving her past behaviour in a spectacularly heroic moment.

Sal Konstanz is as easy to empathize with as Alva Clay is not. She’s no longer so desperate to prove herself a leader worthy of her crew, but she yearns for a family to replace the one taken from her and is willing to settle for Trouble Dog’s crew of misfits.  Luckily, in Trouble Dog she has a partner who yearns for the same thing, a crew to protect while it serves penance for its past as a weapon of war.  Together, they form a family, however damaged and messy.

Powell has always infused his stories with a strong sense of family, and this is very much evident in both Embers of War and Fleet of Knives.  He also utilizes the idea of unexpected consequences, whether it be small scale in the case of the crew of Lucy’s Ghost ill fated attempt at piracy, or universally in that of Ona Sudak, whose actions result in very much the opposite of what she intends.  The overarching theme of this story is a thinly veiled criticism of interventionism.  Within Ona Sudak’s story we see analogies to the many disastrous interventions throughout history that began with subjectively good intentions but then devolved into chaos, such as Vietnam, or more recently, the Iraq war. 

I’ve managed to get this far without really discussing the extradimensional threat, the “Big Bad” the Marble Armada was created to oppose, and that’s simply because it turns out to the be one negative aspect of the novel.  We’re in the second act of three, and these creatures and their motivations are still unclear. I’m assuming the story is building to a final conflict of sorts with this threat, but it’s the one aspect of the story so far that remains elusive.  We know the motivations of all the protagonists except the ones that will foreseeably be the major foe in the third act, Light of Impossible Stars.

Like every great second act, Fleet of Knives ends on a dark note, but with a glimmer in the distance of possibility and hope.  Trouble Dog and her crew are fleeing the expanding conflict, but they know of a place of refuge, where they will be safe while they try to solve the problem of both the Marble Armada and the ancient evil they were created to fight.

I’ll end with this—the tale of Trouble Dog and her misfit crew feels like a microcosm within a greater “Emberverse”* Powell is constructing and will hopefully continue beyond the trilogy.  His universe has great potential for exploration, akin in scale to Iain M. Banks Culture series or James S.A. Corey’s (Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) Expanse. We as readers would be lucky to explore the Emberverse with him.

***

Gareth L Powell won the BSFA award for best novel in 2013 for Ack-Ack Macaque and again in 2019 for Embers of War. He maintains a website at garethlpowell.com

*not to be confused with S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse “Change World” series.

The Martian–Andy Weir

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TheMartian2“Commander,” Beck radioed.  “You need to get to the ship now.”

“Agreed,” Martinez radioed.  “He’s gone, ma’am.  Watney’s gone.”

The four crewmates awaited their commander’s response.

“Copy,” she finally replied. “On my way.”

Source: Netgalley (Review Copy)

Publisher: Crown Publishing

Publication Date: February 11, 2014

When a sandstorm compels NASA to abort the Ares 3 expedition on Mars six days into their month long stay, the team is forced to leave behind a fully functioning habitat, two martian land rovers, millions of dollars of pre-positioned equipment, fifty days of freeze dried food for a crew of six (including fresh potatoes for their Thanksgiving dinner) and one dead astronaut.  Last anyone saw of Mark Watney, flight engineer and team botanist, both he and his EVA suit were compromised, impaled by a communications antenna, tumbling off into the storm with his biometric sensors flat-lined.  Forced by their grave situation to abandon the search for his body, the team leader makes the call and the Martian Ascent Vehicle (MAV) launches, leaving Watney to his fate. 

Fate, living up to its reputation for being fickle, has other plans for Mark Watney.  Against the odds, he survives the suit puncture and impalement and manages to retreat to the expedition’s habitat, which weathered the storm intact.  He’s alive and relatively uninjured.  He has oxygen, water, and food for the next 300 days.  Too bad Ares 4 won’t arrive for another four years, and then around 3200 kilometers from Watney’s refuge. It’s up to him to make his own fate and live to be there when Ares 4 lands.  Watney’s got three things going for him: his ingenuity, his sense of humour in the face of death, and those six potatoes. Thus begins an extraordinary tale of resourcefulness and survival in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe, albeit in a place where everything can kill you.

I first read of Andy Weir’s The Martian early last year while browsing an on-line review.  At the time he was an independent author, and I downloaded a sample with every intention of buying a copy if it proved any good.  Months later, I came across another article mentioning that Weir’s book had been picked up by a mainstream publisher and would be published in February of 2014.  In the meantime, the e-book had become “unavailable” for purchase, a situation which left me somewhat miffed.  However, the publisher was looking for reviewers on Netgalley, so I managed to snag a copy and dug in.

Written from several points of view, the majority being epistolary journal entries by our stranded engineer/botanist, The Martian introduces us to Mark Watney, a thoroughly likeable and extremely resilient character for whom the reader cannot help but root.  He’s no shrinking violet, bemoaning his fate and waiting for the inevitable, but rather your typical “can do” NASA type, working the problem methodically until he achieves one of two results: life; or death.  Throughout the journal, Watney faces many life threatening situations (and some are doozies) and deals with them from an engineering perspective, true to form as…well…an engineer. With this emphasis on problem solving, The Martian is definitely a novel for lovers of hard science fiction, but Weir also develops a character for whom we feel a great deal of empathy, ensuring that the techno-babble doesn’t detract from the story.  The addition of quite a bit of, “you have to laugh or you’ll end up crying,” levity on the part of Watney  helps guarantee the novel not become too dreary. 

One worry I had while reading The Martian was that a novel with a single point of view can limit the author’s ability to build a picture of what’s going on in the greater world (or solar system, in this case).  I wanted to know what the crew were thinking when they presumed Watney dead—and how they dealt with the guilt of leaving a crewmember not just behind, but behind on another planet.  What was going on back at mission control?  How was his family dealing with the loss of their son?   These are all questions that would be impossible to answer had Weir stuck with the epistolary format, so it was satisfying to see him branch out from Watney’s tale and explore those very things.  Transitioning back and forth from Watney’s journal to scenes of his crewmates and people back home gave greater depth to the story than showcasing his tale alone. 

I find generally these days while reading or viewing a movie that it’s hard to get invested in the welfare of the character because you just know that the writer (unless it’s G.R.R. Martin) is not going to do anything too drastic, like kill off the main character.  Knowing that the author won’t take that risk tends to detract from the reader feeling any real investment in a story, but Weir deftly manages to avoid this pitfall.  Every situation Mark Watney faces is written in a way that feels “life or death” in an Apollo 13 sort of way, and until the last few pages of the novel I was unsure as to how things would pan out.  The ingenuity with which Watney, his former crewmates, and the people back on Earth tackle his predicament lends an air of optimism to a novel that could very well have lost itself in the malaise of a man bereft of hope.  Lucky for us, this is not that type of novel.

The Martian is one of those books that you’ll want to read in one or two sittings, maybe even burning a little midnight oil as you follow a lone Martian’s quest to become an Earthling once again.

The Martian will be released by Crown Publishing on February 11, 2014.

B

Bitter Seeds–Ian Tregillis

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Bitter Seeds

“The price has been negotiated.  It will be paid.”

“The Hell it will!  Tell it to sod off.”

“My friends.”  Will spoke in a rigidly neutral tone.  The strain of maintaining his composure and concentration showed in the beads of moisture on his forehead.  “One does not renege on these negotiations…At best we can control the circumstances of the payment.”

At the dawn of the 20th century, many nations looked toward the creation of a superior human through the study of eugenics, a scientific pursuit that was taken to horrifying extremes under the Nazi regime during the 40’s.  In pursuit of the Übermensch, physicians such as Joseph Mengele became notorious for their barbaric experimentation and disregard for human life, while Adolf Hitler’s attitude towards race and racial “purification” (aryanization) directly led to the Holocaust and the genocide of over six million Jews by war’s end in 1945.  Once the atrocities of the camps were exposed to the wider world, the concept of eugenics fell out of favour with the world community.  Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds is the story of an alternate 20th century in which the Nazi’s were successful in bringing about the Übermensch and placing England in such desperate straits as to delve into forces both unnatural and malevolent to counter their Nazi foes.

While on a mission to extract a German defector from Franco’s Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Lieutenant-Commander Raybould Marsh of the S.I.S. (Secret Intelligence Service) witnesses something beyond his ability to comprehend when his contact spontaneously combusts right before his eyes.  All that’s left of the informant’s belongings are some charred papers and the remnants of a remarkable, almost unbelievable film.  Once the film is reconstructed, it shows German test subjects purported to be exhibiting paranormal abilities.  One subject seemingly walks through walls, another crushes objects with his mind and yet a third demonstrates the ability to create and shape fire to his purposes.  Yet it is a young woman who bears no obvious outward manifestation that will prove to be the most dangerous weapon of this Nazi arsenal. 

Once the war begins in earnest, this group of Wunderwaffen prove their worth, forcing Marsh and his mentor in the secret service, John Stephenson, to enlist the help of Marsh’s college friend—and Warlock—Lord William Beauclerk.  Together, they assemble a unit (code-named Milkweed) comprised of Britain’s foremost magical talents to “negotiate” with otherworldly presences known as Eidolons to assure the safety of the home countries.  However, the assistance of these demonic forces comes with a price—a blood price—that quickly escalates as England’s situation deteriorates.  Beyond the physical blood price is the spiritual one as these patriots commit reprehensible acts upon their own countrymen to secure the continued cooperation of their supernatural allies.  As the novel goes on, the British find themselves in a morally suspect situation, and Will begins to suspect that the price of victory—even to stop the evil that is the Third Reich—may not be worth what they’ve sacrificed, both physically and spiritually.  The morally dubious English alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union that in reality allowed an allied victory is in this alternate history replaced with a morally bankrupt alternative in the form of the mysterious Eidolons.

Bitter Seeds is a wonderfully well written novel.  It’s also incredibly dark and depressing, especially as the reader slowly realizes the depths to which the ostensive “good-guys” will sink in their moral corruption.  The actions of the British Warlocks stretch the meaning of the phrase, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to incredulity.  Without giving away any spoilers, the price to be paid for each victory “negotiated” with the Eidolons is an assault on the basic morality of otherwise honourable men.  The novel poses the question of whether or not the ends can always justify the means.  What price would you pay; what heinous actions would you undertake, in the name of the greater good?  Could you kill a child if it would end the war?  How about two?  Or twenty?  Who decides what the greater good is or what price is acceptable, especially if one’s essential morality is lost in the process?  

Of the characters in the novel, it is somewhat ironic that Will, the facilitator of the Milkweed project, is the only character to stop long enough to examine himself and his motives.  He begins the novel as a patriot who wants to do something for his country and as a byproduct impress his brother, and further to be seen as something more than an aristocratic fop.  Later, he comes to question the road they’ve travelled and the price of his actions.  Marsh is a less introspective character, beginning the novel as the good son, modeling his career on that of his adoptive father (the aforementioned John Stephenson, a patriotic yet cold and cunning man) and slowly losing his moral compass as tragedy envelops his family and in his desperation to foil the Nazi Übermensch.

Surprisingly, Tregillis gives us a well-rounded depiction of the Nazi super soldiers, from the principled Klaus to the amoral Reinhardt, the sympathetic simpleton that is Kammler and the self-conscious Heike, and of course, the inscrutable Gretel, to whom everything and everyone is a pawn in a game only she comprehends.   The novel also focuses on small scenes while allowing the greater historical events to fall into place as the stage in which their story plays out.  The greater events of the war, such as the Dunkirk evacuation or operation Sea Lion are mentioned merely as background, but a raid by British forces through supernatural means on the farm that acts as a base to the Übermensch takes up a good portion of the narrative.

Credible world-building is an essential factor in the creation of a believable fantasy novel, even more so in the case of an alternate history, and Tregillis manages to successfully interweave fantasy and science fiction into what would otherwise be categorized as an alternate history novel.  All the essential elements of alternate history are there, twisted into his vision of what might be if the element of fantasy is added.  Dunkirk ends quite differently due to the addition of the Übermensch and their far seer, while the invasion of England is forestalled not by the natural vagaries of the weather (as in reality) but by the mystical wall of nature created by the Eidolons.

I cannot stress enough how very much this is a novel structured around the examination of morality and the horrors that occur when ones moral code is compromised.  Will recoils in horror and devolves into madness as he realizes the evil he has unleashed into the world may be worse than the one they are fighting, while Marsh degenerates from a principled patriot into an obsessive who allows revenge to overcome his principles.  It becomes a matter of the ends justify the means to Marsh, while Will continually questions whether or not they have unduly compromised their humanity.

Bitter Seeds left me with a feeling of profound sadness. I allowed Ian Tregillis to create an empathy in me towards the majority of his characters (yes, even the Übermensch) and then watched them devolve into morally bankrupt shells of their former selves.  Tregillis also left me with an unrepentant desire to continue reading of their decline—or possible salvation—in the next book of the Milkweed triptych, The Coldest War.

B+