My review of Daniel Abraham's LONG PRICE QUARTET, starting with the first book, A SHADOW IN SUMMER:
Centuries ago the Old Empire fell to an internecine civil war, destroyed by the sorcerers known as poets, wielding the powers of ideas given human form and volition, the andat. Whilst the empire was destroyed, the colony-states across the ocean survived and became the cities of the Khaiem, where the power of the andat continues to hold sway and hold rival nations, such as expansionist Galt, in check. The Khaiem are subtle (relying on a complex courtly language of poses) but also ruthless in trade and in the defence of their riches.
Otah Machi was once a student of the poets, but when given the choice to study for entrance to the order he refused and went on the run, refusing to return to his noble home for fear of what chaos it would wreck in the order of succession. Instead, his path takes him south to the city of Saraykeht, a city whose riches are based on the cotton trade, strengthened as it is by the activities of the poet Heshai and his andat, Seedless. Meanwhile, another student of the poets also arrives in Saraykeht on an important mission. Both men become embroiled in a chilling conspiracy designed to destroy the power of the andat once and for all.
A Shadow in Summer is the first novel in The Long Price Quartet, Daniel Abraham's epic fantasy in which war, love, treachery, intrigue and hubris is studied and examined in-depth. Abraham's series is a noted departure in the subgenre in that his focus is more on the motivations of his protagonists rather that the trappings of the setting. The 'magic system', if the relationship between the poets and the andat can be described as such, is vivid and interestingly depicted, but it's more of a means to an end than an end in itself. In this, Abraham is reminiscent of Guy Gavriel Kay, whilst he also shows the influence of his one-time teacher George R.R. Martin in his multi-faceted characters. But the melancholic and slightly defeated tone of the many of the characters is something more unique to Abraham's writing, in particular his humane treatment of his villains, who are shown to have their reasons (feeble or otherwise) for what they are trying to do.
It's something of a quiet book, particularly for the opening volume of a four-volume epic fantasy series, focusing on emotions and motivations, and some may find it too slow-moving (despite its relatively concise 300-page length). But this is more the opening movement of a grand opera, hinting at and laying the groundwork for the greater and grander themes to come.
A Shadow in Summer (****) is a rich and convincing work of fantasy that strikes a different pose (pun intended) to many of its contemporaries, and is all the better for it. It is available now in the USA and, as part of the Shadow and Betrayal omnibus edition, in the UK.
Thirteen years after the dramatic events in Saraykeht, both Otah and Maati are keeping their heads down. Unfortunately, events are conspiring to bring them both to Otah's childhood home of Machi, a far northern city of huge towers and intrigue where the Khai's grasp on power is slipping and hungry factions jockey for position.
The second volume in Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet sees the story becoming darker and more personal, as Otah is forced to confront the choices he has made in his past and challenge the traditions of the Khaiem. Again, Abraham does not send the story down a traditional or cliched route here, giving his 'villain' a conscience which is increasingly stricken by the dark and murderous things she must do to gain power, but perversely this only seems to increase her determination to win through.
The characters of Otah and Maati are developed nicely, along with new characters like Cehmai, and the story unfolds nicely, building to a tremendously intense and emotional convergence. The ending may be somewhat predictable, but the route to get there is thankfully not. Again, this is a somewhat slow-paced novel, but one that is needed to set up the fireworks of the next book in the series.
A Betrayal in Winter (****) is an effective and enjoyable second volume in this sequence. It is available now in the USA and as part of the Shadow and Betrayal omnibus in the UK.
Several times the rulers of Galt have attempted to destroy the poets, the sorcerer-mathematicians who defend the Cities of the Khaiem through the power of the spirits known as andat. Each time they have risked discovery and exposure and the destruction of their homelands in retribution. Now the Galtic general Balasar Gice has returned from a dangerous quest into the heart of the ruined Old Empire and brought back textbooks that may hold the key to destroying the andat once and for all, and enable the armies of Galt to purge the Khaiem before they can bind new spirits.
As the Autumn War begins, Otah and Maati discover that only they have the skills and abilities that can stop the invasion, but only if they have enough time, and only if they can fully control the powers they seek to summon...
An Autumn War is the third and penultimate volume of The Long Price Quartet, and also the fastest-paced and strongest book in the series. The first two books were slow-building tragedies revolving around intrigue, ambition and betrayal. The third book is about war, the reasons for it and its devastating consequences. Balasar believes that the world is threatened with annihilation at any time if the andat remain alive, whilst Maati is convinced that their powers can be harnessed for the good of mankind. Otah stands between them, having himself seen the evil and destruction that the andat can unleash and the imperfections in the poets' training, but at the same time rejecting the Galts' murderous answer to the quandary.
It's an interesting book, with the military action being interspersed with thoughts on the morality of holding weapons of mass destruction (although the multiple interpretations of this leads me to believe that Abraham wasn't making a one-on-one correlation to nuclear weapons) and the characters' different approaches to dealing with the crisis. Abraham isn't the best author in the world at describing battles and military action, preferring to hold it back in favour of emphasising the impact of the war on the characters and their relationships. This he handles with aplomb, building up to a conclusion horrifying and unexpected in its tragic ramifications.
An Autumn War (****½) is an excellent fantasy novel, the highlight of this four-book series, and is well-recommended. The book is available now in the USA and in the UK as part of the Seasons of War omnibus.
A decade and more after the conclusion of the Autumn War, the lands of the Khaiem and Galt are still reeling from the aftermath of their devastating conflict. Otah Machi works to bind the two nations together in a new alliance, whilst the disgraced Maati attempts his own restitution by training a new breed of poets. However, the new Khaiem poets are haunted and traumatised by what happened to them and their families during the war, and placing the power of the andat in the hands of those burning for vengeance proves to be a decision with far-reaching consequences...
The Price of Spring is the fourth and final book in the Long Price Quartet, and brings the story of Otah and Maati to a conclusion. The four books span decades, almost the full lifespans of both characters, and in this final volume we see them reach an accommodation with themselves and their lives and the decisions they have made. The result is a somewhat melancholy book focused on repairing the damage from decisions made in earlier books in the series and reflecting on the paths that have brought them and their people to where they are now.
'Aftermath' books tend to be mixed affairs, and are not always the most popular works in a series. Martin's A Feast for Crows - an aftermath volume to the first three books in the series - has had a mixed reception, whilst Feist's Shards of a Broken Crown - the final volume in his Serpentwar Saga - is widely considered to mark the start of a terminal decline in his writing quality. Abraham sidesteps this problem by including a dramatic new storyline (springing out of story seeds planted in earlier books) about a rogue poet which works quite well and gives this final volume a central spine to hang on its themes of reconciliation, redemption and restitution, which are all well-explored.
There are some weak moments. Events in Galt are frequently referenced but not expanded on as much as might be desired, whilst the introduction of Galtic steam technology to the Khaiem cities is touched on but left under-developed. Whilst not a major story point, it would nevertheless been interesting to have followed these elements a little more closely. In addition the ending, whilst still bittersweet, does have a sense of being slightly too neat. I would also have expected far more anger and rage against the Galts for their role in events in An Autumn War. In particular, it is a massive stretch of believability that Balasar Gice, the individual responsible for basically laying waste to both Galt and the Khaiem in the previous novel, is still in a position of power in The Price of Spring and not either forcibly retired or even imprisoned or killed.
These problems are mostly minor and can be ignored in favour of the book being an elegant and reserved conclusion to one of the more accomplished fantasy series of recent years. The Price of Spring (****) is available now in the USA and as part of the Seasons of War omnibus in the UK.
A review of one of Abraham's new books out this year, the first in a new space opera series.
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck)
Holden is a crewman on the Canterbury, an ice-hauler traipsing back and forth between the inner planets of the Solar system and the outer colonies. When his ship is attacked by unknown forces whilst investigating a derelict, a series of events is set in motion which will lead the three great powers - Earth, Mars and the Belt - to the brink of war. Meanwhile, Miller, a cop on Ceres, is tasked with investigating the disappearance of a young woman. His search leads him closer to a far-ranging conspiracy, and into contact with Holden and his crew. The stakes are high as they uncover a threat to the entire human race, a threat which some see as an opportunity...
Leviathan Wakes, the first book in The Expanse series, is an unapologetic, old-school space opera. There's been a few of these recently, but few with the elan and furiously page-turning readability of this book. Part of this can be attributed to its writers: James S.A. Corey is a pen-name for Daniel Abraham, the author of the brilliant Long Price Quartet fantasy series, and Ty Franck, George R.R. Martin's assistant who created the setting for an SF roleplaying campaign. Abraham's experience and steadying hand and Franck's ferocious enthusiasm have combined here to create something quite compelling. In the acknowledgements section they reveal that a number of other major SFF authors had a hand in critiquing the book and offering advice, such as Walter Jon Williams (himself a space opera veteran) and astrophysicist Ian Tregillis, who helped out with the hard science part of the book.
Part of the appeal of the book is its structure. Like Donaldson's Gap Series and Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, it uses a rotating POV technique. Unlike those big, sprawling series, Leviathan Wakes only has two major POV characters, Holden and Miller, and bounces back and forth between them in turn. This has the effect of keeping the book very tightly focused, helping keep the pace fast but not so much that subtler nuances of plot and characterisation are lost. The authors aren't reinventing the wheel here and the two characters are pretty standard types: Miller is the embittered, cynical, divorced, hard-drinking cop with trust issues, Holden the idealistic, righteous and optimistic officer. Naturally they're chalk and cheese and don't get on very well at first but eventually strike up a good working relationship and earn some mutual respect.
Luckily, the authors are too good to let this transform into a 1980s buddy cop movie. The characters are well-motivated with convincing motivations and rationales for their actions, and they are steered away from cliche as their relationship takes some unexpected turns as the book progresses. There is also a nice contrast in that Holden has a small crew of well-drawn characters supporting him, whilst Miller is working alone. The supporting cast, such as Holden's crew, is also well-depicted, but the important character of Fred seems a bit too convenient and good to be true, and hopefully we get more into his head in later books in the series as he is a bit flat as a character at the moment. The other major character, Julie, is presented in an intriguing manner: missing when the book opens, Miller constructs a mental version of Julie to help him get through the case and then has to keep readjusting that image as he encounters the life story of the 'real' Julie.
The book appears to have many influences. John Carpenter's The Thing appears to have been one, whilst the small ship and the loyal crew elements recall Firefly and Blake's 7. Using a (relatively) small cast as a window onto larger events, mostly reported through news reports and tension-filled long-range transmissions, is reminiscent of Babylon 5, as is the general tech level and the use of real Newtonian physics in the space battles. I'd also be surprised if Donaldson's Gap Series hadn't been read by both authors, whilst the cop-in-space-noir-thriller angle is reminiscent of some of Alastair Reynolds' work. The tensions between the 'stations' (as the asteroid settlements are derogatorily called by the people of Earth and Mars) and the planets also recalls CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station. But these influences are never worn too overtly on the sleeve: Leviathan Wakes also forges its own path.
Leviathan Wakes (****½) is a ridiculously entertaining space opera, let down perhaps by only a couple of coincidences and moments of dramatic convenience. Otherwise it's a relentless, page-turning novel with some great character-building. The book will be published in the UK on 2 June 2011 and in the USA on 15 June 2011. The second volume, Caliban's War, is apparently already nearly complete and should follow in a year or so.
Well I'm excited about a new Daniel Abraham book. I'm a lot more interested in a novel than the Wild Card series he's been working on.
I absolutely loved the Long Price Quartet. I thought they were some of the most imaginative books that I've seen in a while.
Nothing else to really add, just wanted to post in a flush of enthusiasm.
I absolutely loved the Long Price Quartet. I thought they were some of the most imaginative books that I've seen in a while.
+1. Beautifully written, too. And with sensitive characterization!
Just superb fantasy, the kind you too rarely see.
I'm really looking forward to The Dragon's Path. It's easily one of my most anticipated titles for 2011.
The Dagger and the Coin #1: The Dragon's Path
The thirteen races of humanity have survived the downfall of the Dragon Empire and forged new kingdoms. The great nation of Antea now seeks to expand its influence into the Free Cities, sending its army to conquer the city of Vanai. Ahead of the Antean advance, the Medean Bank evacuates its Vanaian treasury by caravan, escorted by a young ward of the bank, Cithrin Bel Sarcour, and one of the most respected soldiers in the city, Captain Marcus Wester.
Meanwhile, in Camnipol, capital of Antea, Baron Dawson Kalliam finds himself engaged in a clandestine struggle as two factions clash for influence over the Severed Throne, with the assault on Vanai just one of the intrigues in motion. Geder Palliako, a minor nobleman accompanying the army, is less interested in glory and plunder than in knowledge and lore, and in Vanai finds hints that will lead him to unexpected ends. And in a remote and distant mountain range, a shadowy organisation holds secrets that the world has long forgotten...
A bald plot summary suggests that The Dragon's Path is the same old: armies marching and lords politicking whilst an ancient threat lurks in the wings. To some degree this is understandable: after completing the Asian-influenced Long Price Quartet, Abraham decided to pen a more traditional fantasy series. The Dagger and the Coin is set in a land more overtly influenced by late Medieval/early Renaissance Europe, complete with powerful kingdoms, feuding city-states and a banking institution reminiscent of the Medici. On the one hand this may be considered a retreat by Abraham into writing something less original, but on the other it may have been a wise move, given that readers responded to the near-blanket critical acclaim of The Long Price Quartet by not buying it (at least not in the United States).
Still, whilst Abraham may be swimming in more familiar waters, that's not to say he doesn't put 110% effort into it. His trademark impressive characterisation remains the focus of the book: whilst major and epic events rock the world, his interest is more in the development of Dawson, Geder, Cithrin and Wester, our main POV characters (there's a few other minor ones, likely to rise more to the fore in future books). These characters are somewhat complex and all deeply conflicted. Dawson is presented somewhat sympathetically as a loyalist to the king, but he's also a staunchly traditionalist opponent of any change in the social order calls for greater freedom being to resonate from the populace. Geder is selfishly only interested in pursuing his interest in book-learning, which seems harmless enough until he is given a position of authority and promptly displays a side we hadn't seen before. Cithrin is a confident negotiator and investor who is utterly lost when faced with the day-to-day realities of surviving on the road, whilst Wester is the old soldier who strives for cynicism but keeps being drawn to idealistic causes.
For The Long Price, Abraham used economics as a casus belli for the conflict, but didn't fully engage with the economics in depth. This is understandable as making economics interesting to the average reader can be tricky, though in the past Scott Lynch, KJ Parker and, perhaps unexpectedly, Raymond E. Feist have made good fists of it, whilst it is a minor but important driving point in conflicts in both A Song of Ice and Fire and The Wheel of Time. In The Dragon's Path Abraham deals with the economics in a more direct fashion, making one of the main characters a banker and one of the most powerful institutions in the world a bank. He avoids tedium by showing how the bank's activities impact on the wider politics of the world, though I suspect this will be more critical in subsequent volumes.
Abraham's prose is enjoyable to read, though perhaps a tad more prosaic here than in the more lyrical moments of The Long Price. The book isn't as fast and furious as his other 2011 release, Leviathan Wakes (under the pen-name James S.A. Corey), but is still well-paced, laying out the world and the stakes alongside the characters and politics.
On the weaker side of things, there are some moments when each of the four main characters loses the reader's sympathy (one of them never gets it back, but remains a fascinating protagonist). Intriguing side-characters get less page time than might be wished (Dawson's wife, Clara, has a solid subplot of her own and is one of the more interesting characters in the book). If you've read interviews with Abraham about what his influences were on the series, there are a few moments when those influences become a little too apparent (especially the parallel between Geder and events in a certain SF series; not Firefly). More problematic is that Abraham, having established thirteen different branches of humanity, doesn't give us much info on what these differences are, reducing them to just names, though in fairness Abraham has acknowledged this issue and promised to put more information in the sequels and on his website.
Overall, however, The Dragon's Path (****½) is a winner. The characters are engaging and well-motivated, the plot intriguing despite some surface familiarity, and events are resolved enough to not make the wait for the second book, The King's Blood, too painful. The book will be published on 7 April in the USA and on 21 April in the UK.
Lucky you, Wert, to get your hands on that already. I am waiting with great anticipation after reading the prologue on A Dribble of Ink.
I am halfway through The Dragon's Path, and Werthead seems to have hit the nail on the head in almost every way.
One thing that he didn't mention: Without double-checking, I'd say that each volume in the Long Price Quartet was about 300 pages, meaning the whole series clocked in at about 1200. The Dragon's Path, the first in a proposed quintet, is 550 pages, i.e., the first book is almost half the length of his previous series!
Here's hoping that quantity won't detract from quality!
The Dagger and the Coin #2: The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham
Imperial Antea, the greatest nation in the world, is on the rise. Thanks to the hitherto-unexpected skills of Geder Palliako, a young nobleman, a conspiracy to murder the heir to the Antean throne has been exposed and defeated. Now the Anteans are pursuing the roots of the conspiracy into neighbouring Asterilhold, an investigation which threatens to explode into full-scale war. Baron Dawson Kalliam is summoned to serve his country, but as he works with Geder he discovers the shadowy roots of Geder's new political skills and is left with a critical decision to make.
Across the continent, Cithrin Bel Sarcour's position as the face of the new Medean Bank in Porte Olivia is undermined by the arrival of a new notary determined to stop Cithring doing her job. Furious, Cithrin undertakes a journey to Carse to convince the leaders of the bank that she can do the job. This fateful decision will lead her into the heart of the growing storm that threatens to plunge the known world into chaos and war.
The King's Blood is the second novel in The Dagger and the Coin and the sequel to last year's promising opening volume in the sequence, The Dragon's Path. With this series Daniel Abraham has moved away from the Asian-tinged fantasy of his debut Long Price Quartet in favour of tackling a more traditional, Western European-based fantasy. Whilst he's moved the date to one later than normal (Renaissance Europe rather than the traditional medieval period, with a banking institution modelled on the Medici), he's still swimming in more familiar waters.
However, this move has not dented his enthusiasm or writing skills. The Dragon's Path was a very solid opening novel, but The King's Blood eclipses it on almost every level. The writing is more confident and assured. The characterisation is richer, both of the established cast (Cithrin develops into a more layered character than before; Marcus Wester's psychological state becomes clearer; Geder becomes a lot more disturbing) and of relative newcomers. Clara Kalliam had a subplot in The Dragon's Path but in this novel develops into a key protagonist as she deals with a minor scandal in her family and then has to engage with the developing political crisis. There is more action, including a skirmish with pirates and several sieges and battles, but also more introspection as the characters evolve into more fully-realised figures. Particularly fascinating are Yardem and Marcus, a fine fantasy double-act who provide a great deal of the book's humour but are also potentially storing up tragedy between them.
The worldbuilding is also improved upon from The Dragon's Path, where the differences between the various kingdoms and the thirteen distinct races of mankind were not very well-established. This is immensely improved upon in The King's Blood (and not just by the addition of a glossary), with the world becoming more convincing and the distinctions between the races better-established. An area that requires more work, however, is the political landscape in Antea, which still feels somewhat under-developed. This wasn't so much a problem in the first novel, but risks becoming an issue in The King's Blood, particularly in the concluding section of the novel which suffers a little from a lack of scope due to the very narrow focus.
The book unfolds at a fairly swift pace, which results in the pages flying by so fast that the book's end, and the resulting year-long wait for Book 3, comes upon the reader unexpectedly. The book's excellence overcomes the occasional resorting to epic fantasy contrivance (journeys are either major undertakings or are completely skipped over depending on plot needs) or its inspirations being worn a little too openly on the sleeve (the Geder plotline's parallels to the Londo Mollari storyline in Babylon 5 risk it becoming predictable until it starts to swerve away from that structure late in the novel).
The King's Blood (*****) has a few minor flaws but overall is a very fine epic fantasy novel, a huge improvement over the already-fine Dragon's Path, and notable for its focus on finely-judged characterisation as much as the more traditional furniture of the genre. It's also a fast, addictive read that elevates The Dagger and the Coin into the position of one of the finest in-progress fantasy series around at the moment. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.
Yay! The second one is out!
Not quite...I think only ARCs are out right now. I've got it pre-ordered on Amazon.
Nope, it is out now. Copies are in my local bookstore right now (in the UK) and they've been seen in the USA.
Orbit often release books before the official release date, sometimes 2-3 weeks earlier, so if you're really keen to get a book from them it can be worthwhile to check the shops rather than Amazon (where they are held until the release date).
Nifty! I'm getting it for my kindle so I have to wait until tomorrow. But I can wait one more day.
Yay!! I'll read it when it comes to the library!
The Expanse #2: Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck)
An alien protomolocule has taken root on Venus. Earth and Mars are in a shooting match over an incident on Ganymede. The Solar system is moving towards all-out anarchy and war, and it falls to a well-meaning meddler, a canny politician, a Martian marine and a grief-stricken botanist to try to stop the descent into madness.
Caliban's War is the second novel in The Expanse series, following on from last year's well-received Leviathan Wakes. This is old-school space opera, featuring the crew of a spacecraft as they attempt to save the Solar system from an alien menace. The series features some nods towards serious science - the ships work strictly by Newtonian physics and there is no FTL travel, with the scope of events being limited (so far) to the Solar system alone - but it's certainly not hard SF. The emphasis is being on an entertaining, fast-paced read, and the book pulls this off with aplomb.
The cast of characters has been expanded in this volume, with only Holden returning as a POV character from the first volume. Unlike the first novel, which had a grand total of two POVs, this second volume features four: Holden, UN politician Avasarala, botanist Prax and marine Bonnie. This means that the authors have three major new characters to introduce us to, as well as continuing the storyline from the first novel and evolving the returning cast of characters (Holden and his crew). This results in the pace being marginally slower than in Leviathan Wakes, although certainly not fatally so. Indeed, Abraham and Franck imbue the new characters with interesting backstories, motivations and quirks. It's also quite amusing that the most enjoyable character in an action-packed space opera is a 70-year-old politician with a potty mouth.
There's some major shoot-outs, a few big space battles, a close encounter with a rampaging monster in a zero-gravity cargo hold and other action set pieces that are handled well, but the book falters a little in its handling of politics (which are fairly lightweight) and the characterisation of the bad guys, who never rise above the obvious.
Caliban's War (***½) is not as accomplished as its forebear but is still a page-turning, solidly enjoyable read. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.
The Dagger and the Coin #3: The Tyrant's Law by Daniel Abraham
The armies of Antea have conquered Asterilhold, but Geder Palliako, the Regent, allows his troops no time for rest. His plans, and those of the cult of the spider goddess, have taken on a note of urgency as they try to unearth the conspiracy that resulted in the death of the last King of Antea. In Camnipol, the disgraced wife of the traitor Dawson is working to both reestablish herself and her household and to bring about Geder's downfall. In the wilderness of the southern jungles, Marcus Wester and the renegade spider priest Kit are searching for a powerful weapon to use against the cult. And in the city of Suddapal Cithrin is apprenticed to an experienced banker to complete her training. But as the armies of Antea advance, Cithrin discovers that making money may be less important than finding a good cause on which to spend it.
The Tyrant's Law is the third volume in the five-volume The Dagger and the Coin, bringing this series past its halfway point. Those who've read The Dragon's Path and The King's Blood will know what to expect: well-crafted characters in an interesting (if not overtly original) world taking part in a plot inspired by a mixture of Babylon 5, Firefly and the real-life history of the Medicis. Like many such epic fantasy series with a number of entwining plots and character arcs, the series risks getting more diffuse the further it goes on, but Abraham prevents sprawl by maintaining a tight grip on a small number of POV characters: the entire plot unfolds from the POVs of Cithrin, Marcus, Clara (Dawson's widow) and Geder alone. This keeps the pace brisk and the word-count low, though not the page-count; due to a questionable decision to print the book in a font so large I briefly thought it was the edition for the hard of seeing, the book is exactly 500 pages in length, which seems rather unnecessary.
Still, The Tyrant's Law is a very good fantasy novel. Abraham has always been more interested in the nuances of characters than in massive battles and magical fireworks, and his most enviable skill is developing characters concisely and establishing convincing depths within them. So whilst we have no new POV characters, all of the returning faces get new dimensions added to them and more development into fully-rounded individuals. Geder becomes more accomplished in the arts of political intrigue, Clara becomes a convincing intriguer and Cithrin, already a skilled financier, learns some things about family and responsibility. Though not POV characters, both Yardem and Kit also develop in intriguing ways. Abraham undercuts some traditional epic fantasy tropes as well, such as turning a Conan-esque raid on a temple into a moment of profound character and spiritual revelation.
In some areas The Tyrant's Law is a bit of a let-down on The King's Blood. There's a lot of wandering around the countryside and at two separate times the same characters head into the wilderness to find a secret magical MacGuffin, giving rise to a feeling of repetition (though again Abraham subverts expectations with a surprisingly epic flashback ending). Cithrin being reluctantly apprenticed to yet another Medean bank executive (albeit a rather different character) and learning valuable life lessons also feels a bit over-familiar. The Tyrant's Law is a middle volume and showing some of the weaknesses of that position, but overcomes most of them through some solid plotting and decent characterisation.
If there is one major criticism that can be made of the series, it's that Abraham has deliberately set out to write something more traditional after the relative commercial disappointment of his debut sequence, the lyrical and imaginative Long Price Quartet. As a result, whilst Long Price felt like it was written from the heart, Dagger and the Coin sometimes feels a little too artificially-constructed and a little too knowing in its references. This isn't a major problem, but it does make one feel that this series is going to end up in the 'enjoyably good series' pile rather than the 'modern fantasy classics', where Long Price firmly resides. Still, with two more books to go, Abraham still has time to elevate the series to a new level.
The Tyrant's Law (****½) will be published in the UK and USA on 14 May.
Wow. #3 is out, huh?
I never read #2. I was about to start, was having trouble remembering which character was which, and realized that I would have to do this three more times before the series was finished.
Maybe I'll check out #2 when #3 gets published around here, but I doubt it.
There aren't many characters, compared to Malazan it's easier to remember, problem for me there's nothing special about them, one character has a bit of originality. I haven't found #2 interesting enough to continue the series.
But there are more characters, compared to Robinson Crusoe.
The Expanse #3: Abaddon's Gate
A mysterious alien artifact - a gateway - has been constructed beyond Uranus's orbit. Its purpose is unknown. Representatives from Earth, Mars and the Belt are rushing to investigate, among them, reluctantly, Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante. The artifact holds the key to the future of the human race, an opportunity to spread mankind to the stars...but it is also a weapon that could incinerate the entire Solar system if it falls unto the wrong hands.
Abaddon's Gate is the third novel in The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), which is expected to run to nine novels (and "Will soon be a major television series"). This book picks up after the events of Caliban's War, although unfortunately some of the more notable characters from that book are missing. Instead, we have a number of new POV characters joining the returning figures of Holden and the Rocinante crew.
The book initially opens with the different factions racing to the gate with their own agendas and goals in mind. There's a murderous character plotting vengeance on Holden in a (not very convincing) way of getting him involved in the plot. There's tensions on the Belter command ship between the psychotic captain and his more reasonable executive officer and security chief. There's a religious-but-non-fanatical leader who couples pious morality with hard-headed practicality. And so on. It's all reasonable enough, until the crew arrive at the gate and pass through it into a strange sub-pocket of space where physical rules can be rewritten and an ancient intelligence uses the form of Detective Miller to speak to Holden.
At this point things take a turn for the bizarre and it feels like The Expanse is about to break out into a fully-blown hard SF novel. The "slow zone" of the gateway space feels like a nod to Vernor Vinge, and the limitations of slower-than-light travel when the laws of physics keep changing is the sort of thing that would earn an Alastair Reynolds nod of approval. It's all nicely set up for The Expanse to move away from its MOR space opera roots and turn into something more than explosions and gunfights.
Except that doesn't happen. The novel soon falls back into its comfort zone of explosions and gunfights, with the major characters all forced into choosing sides between the psychotic captain of the Belter command ship and his other senior crew. This would have more resonance if we'd had the mad captain set up a bit better, but he isn't. It just feels like he's there and mad and antagonistic because, well, the book wouldn't have any conflict without him.
The action set-pieces are generally well-handled, there's some very nice zero-gee combat scenes and Abraham and Franck don't let up on the pace until the last page. There is no denying that there's fun to be had here. But it also feels a bit shallow, and it reinforces the feeling that The Expanse is SF with the training wheels left on. Abaddon's Gate feels like it should have been allowed to make a turn into crazy hard SF weirdness, but instead it's shoehorned back into being an action story. A very nicely-done action story, but there is military SF around that does this stuff a lot better.
As it stands, Abaddon's Gate (***½) ends up being just another readable, fast-paced and entertaining instalment of a readable, fast-paced and entertaining series. Which is fine, but there is definitely the prospect here, between the authors' excellent worldbuilding and solid prose skills, of elevating things onto another level. Hopefully later instalments will deliver on the promise of the series, which is so far tantalising but unfulfilled. Abaddon's Gate is available now in the UK and USA.
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I don't think this review of Abbadon's Gate is very fair. It is doing the exact same things that made the first one good, and the first one was a whole star higher.
I mean, sure, it didn't go all Alistair Reynolds all us, but need it? The Expanse is all about being a space opera with a gigantic, Reynolds-esque, galactic-sweeping scope in the background, while humans shoot each other for the wrong reasons in the foreground. The explicit intent of the story is to follow humanity through the growing pains of becoming a real advanced star-faring race. Given this, judging on the scope of a nine novel storyline without being able to see even half of it seems premature. Abbadon's Gate works great on its own, it advances the overall plotline hugely without being encumbered by that heavy duty, and it is every bit as fun to read as the first novel in the series.
Expectation management: the next book will be similar in style and tone. Some awesome big-idea scifi in the background, politics and misunderstandings causing violence in the foreground.
Generally speaking, the writers view their series as a string of arcs, each arc two books long. That's why Caliban's War was almost identical to Leviathan's Wake in the story and themes departments. Cibola Burn is similar to Abbadon's Gate in the sense that it is about humans really messing up their first tentative steps in a brand new age, but it does not feel nearly as derivative of its predecessor as the second felt to the first.
I didn't have a chance to pick up Nemesis Games yet, but people are talking about it in terms of "best in the series so far", so that should be exciting.
An alien artifact has opened a wormhole nexus leading to a thousand different star systems, all of them containing at least one Earth-like world. A mass exodus, the greatest diaspora in human history, is threatening to take place but one group of Belter settlers have already staked a claim to a world they call Ilus, although the corporation granted UN settlement rights prefers to call it New Terra. As the settlers and corporate representatives resort to violence, it falls to Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante to mediate their dispute. This proves to be a lot easier said than done.
Cibola Burn is the fourth novel in The Expanse series by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (writing as James S.A. Corey) and the first to take place outside the Solar system. The Expanse's big success in its opening novels was that it created a relatively restrained vision of the future, with humanity forced to employ slower-than-light travel between the worlds of the Solar system. After the events of Abaddon's Gate, the way to the stars has been thrown open, but it still takes months to get anywhere. For the colonists on Ilus and later the Rocinante crew, this puts them well out of the range of immediate help when things go disastrously wrong.
Each of the Expanse novels has taken a somewhat different tone, helped by Holden being the only continuing POV character, with the rest being exclusive to each novel. Cibola Burn feels like a Western (and more Deadwood than Gunsmoke), with the unruly settlers on the frontier being reeled back in by the mining company backed up by a reluctant sherrif with Indians and smallpox on the horizon. There's lots of hard moral questions and tough challenges posed by both the situation and the environment. This shift of tone is welcome and well-played as it allows a tighter focus on real, low-tech issues and solutions like the first (and still the best) novel in the series, Leviathan Wakes. The threat of the protomolecule, its creators and its even more enigmatic enemies does reassert itself towards the end of the book, along with a space-borne problem that feels a little too reminiscent of Abaddon's Gate, but it definitely takes a back seat for the most of the book.
The focus is on three new characters: a Belter settler named Basia, who is reluctantly drawn into becoming a terrorist; a security officer called Havelock on the orbiting corporation ship and a scientist named Elvi who just wants to be left alone so she can get on with cataloguing the planet's crazy flora and fauna. These are all well-crafted characters, if not particularly original. Havelock, as the company man who suddenly realises his corporate masters are useless, is an archetype that is looking dangerously overused at this point in the series. Other characters are less well-defined, and main villain Murtry is as cliched and uninteresting as they come: a rigid, dogmatic man unable to adapt to changing circumstances unless it involves shooting things. I get the impression that Abraham and Frank wanted to create a morally murky situation with sympathetic POVs on both sides, but Murtry's outright villainy soon means that the corporate side loses all sympathy and interest.
For a novel almost 600 pages long (in hardcover!) the pages fly past briskly and there's an interesting move away from the gunfights and set piece explosions of the previous novels. There's still a zero-G battle or three, but the writers dial back the more obvious shooting in favour of evoking the occasional SF sensawunda that represents the genre at its best. The social commentary on us bringing our baggage to the stars is well-handled, if a little obvious, and events run enjoyably up to a climax that hints at bigger things to come.
Cibola Burn (****) is the best book in the series since Leviathan Wakes, restoring focus and verve to a series that felt like it was becoming predictable. It'll be interesting to see how they adapt this book to the screen in later seasons of The Expanse, however. Although the producers will likely enjoy the far smaller scale (and hence budget) of things, I can't see viewers being too interested in taking a season off from the rest of the Solar system to see Holden and his crew dealing with frontier settler problems. But as a novel, it workers very well. The book is available now in the UK and USA.
Several years of constant duty has left the independent frigate Rocinante damaged and in severe need of a refit. With the ship in a repair dock for several months of work, the crew scatters back to their homes to catch up with old friends and family. With humanity moving out to explore the new worlds beyond the alien wormhole gateway, it feels like a time of peace and opportunity. This abruptly changes when the largest terrorist attack in human history kills millions and suddenly the Solar system is plunged into chaos. The crew of the Rocinante have to regroup and stop the crisis from getting even worse.
Nemesis Games is the fifth of nine planned books in The Expanse series, carrying us firmly into the second half of the story. Co-authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (writing as James S.A. Corey) have structured this series in a very interesting way, using only Jim Holden as their ongoing POV character and swapping other characters in and out with every passing volume. The story has also evolved in an organic way, moving from a near-future thriller rooted in realism in Leviathan Wakes to much grander stories involving aliens and gateways, as well as frontier colonialism. This approach helps keep things fresh, especially when compared to the numerous military SF series out which go on year after year, getting more stale with each passing volume.
Nemesis Games is different to the preceding books in several ways. First off, it splits the POVs between the four crewmembers of the Rocinante. Holden still present, but Alex, Amos and Naomi now all get their own storylines and perspectives. This is a very welcome and overdue move, especially for Naomi who always clearly had more background and complexity going on than Holden (who is often somewhat dense, it has to be said) was able to discern from her. Focusing on Amos, a deeply violent man who requires external stabilising forces to keep himself from snapping altogether, is also a rewarding move which furthers his character more. Alex is the most straightforward crewmember on the Rocinante and this makes him arguably the least interesting, but Abraham and Franck throw in a crowd-pleasing move by teaming him up with Bobbie Draper, the fan-favourite Martian marine from Caliban's War, for most of his mission.
The rotating chapter structure keeps things ticking along quite nicely and at first it appears that our characters are all involved in completely different events. Links soon appear between them and suddenly everything comes crashing together when the terror attacks take place. This is a game-changing moment in the series when the powers and factions we have gotten used to through four previous volumes are challenged by the arrival of a new, more dangerous force and all the existing rules are thrown out. The abruptness of the catastrophic attack is brutally effective, even if the scale of the conspiracy required to bring it about is at times unconvincing: Abraham and Franck evoke a similar feeling of shock to the events of 9/11 but on a far vaster scale involving thousands of conspirators, but that makes the likelihood of the plan succeeding without being found out rather less likely.
Once chaos has been unleashed the authors slam down the accelerator. Nemesis Games moves rapidly between Alex and Bobbie on a desperate rescue mission to Holden's politicking on Tycho Station to Amos and Clarissa Mao trying to escape from a scene of utter devastation to Naomi reluctantly trapped on the inside of the criminal conspiracy. There's a feeling of doom-laden relentlessness to the book which keeps things moving along quickly. This is also the first time in the series where the authors haven't felt the need to tie up the primary storyline before the end of the novel, as they seem to consider Nemesis Games and the forthcoming sixth volume, Babylon's Ashes, as a duology within the framework of the larger series. The novel ends with the bad guys still at large, the catastrophic aftermath of the attack still unfolding and new threats emerging beyond the wormhole gateways.
There are flaws in all of this: Naomi is captured and spends the bulk of the novel imprisoned and trying to talk her captors down from their villainy. Although the authors change things up by having Naomi's captors being her friends from childhood, it still feels a little too much like a retread of Naomi's story in the previous novel in the series, Cibola Burn. The actual moment of the terror attack also feels a little undercooked, as we move from the villain declaiming that something huge is about to happen to seeing a news report on the aftermath. But the impact on the characters is immense and the way it restructures the story going forwards is quite well-handled. In addition, some readers may be disappointed that there is little to no expansion given for the protomolecule storyline and the mystery of what happened to its creators, but arguably after three books focusing on that to the possible detriment of the human story, that's not too much of a problem.
Nemesis Games (****½) finally fulfils the promise laid down by Leviathan Wakes five years ago and is the best volume in The Expanse to date. The novel is available now in the UK and USA. The next book in the series, Babylon's Ashes, will be published on 2 November 2016.
The Expanse #6: Babylon's Ashes
The Solar system has been plunged into chaos. A third of the Martian fleet has defected to a new cause, an OPA breakaway faction has committed the greatest terrorist attack in human history and the new colony worlds beyond the gateways are engulfed in strife. It once again falls on the shoulders of Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante to help end the crisis.
Babylon's Ashes is the sixth novel (of nine) in The Expanse series, but is really the second half of the preceding novel, Nemesis Games, which took the Expanse universe we'd all grown to know and tossed it through a blender. Ashes picks up the wreckage from that book and tries to restore some sense of normalcy to the setting.
The book is huge in scope. In fact, it's the broadest in scale of the series to date, with numerous POV characters in multiple factions, including picking up on various one-off POVs who appeared in earlier novels. Seeing characters like Prax and Anna show up again several volumes after their own storylines apparently ended and lend a hand (or take a view) on what's going on is quite good fun.
However, since Babylon's Ashes is pretty much exactly the same length as the other books in the series, this enlarged scope does mean we get a lot less time with other characters. In fact, the book's pace feels a bit accelerated, as we pin-pong back and forth between a large cast. Having more characters in a standard-sized book means that we spend less time with each character, and the resulting story arcs are much choppier.
It also doesn't help that there is a repetition of structure and plot here. We've seen Jim Holden and the team getting into hijinks with the Nauvoo aka Behemoth aka Medina Station and the "slow zone" previously whilst various other factions shoot at one another and here we are, doing it again.
The Expanse is, at its best, a thrillingly executed political thriller in space, with normally enjoyable adventure elements added. At its worst, the series' workmanlike prose and tight focus can leave it feeling repetitive and a bit MOR as these kind of space operas go. Nemesis Games was probably the best book in the series because it gave readers a "Red Wedding" level of shock, something which overthrew the apple carts and put our heroes on the back foot with a genuinely thrilling sense that anything could happen. Babylon's Ashes wastes that promise by lowballing the damage done from the disaster in the previous novel (the characters are now completely removed from the carnage so it's only related through statistics and people looking glumly at reports on screens), eliminating the over-arcing threat easily with a convenient mcguffin and then establishing a new status quo with almost indecent haste.
That's not to say that Babylon's Ashes is a bad book. Even at its weakest, The Expanse is competent. But there is the prevailing feeling here that the books feel like a first draft with the (decidedly superior) TV adaptation coming in afterwards and rearranging the character and plot elements into something considerably more compelling.
Babylon's Ashes (***) is readable and interesting, but after Nemesis Games it feels decidedly underwhelming, occasionally bordering on the lacklustre. It is available now in the UK and USA.
The Expanse #7: Persepolis Rising
Over the last thirty years, Earth, Mars and the Belt have unified to explore and settle the thirteen hundred colony worlds beyond the ring gates. The divisions and damage of previous generations are slowly being forgotten...until the colony world of Laconia launches a coup using protomolecule-based technology. As a new empire rises, the crew of the ageing frigate Rocinante once again find themselves on the front lines.
Persepolis Rising, the seventh book in The Expanse, opens with a bit of a non-sequitur time jump as we leap thirty years after the events of Babylon's Ashes. This is an interesting narrative decision, although one that is decidedly undersold: everyone is pretty much exactly where we left them in the previous volume and doing much the same thing, which not so much stretches credulity as shatters it into ten thousand tiny pieces. Time jumps are tricky to get right and can often feel contrived, and the time jump in this book feels rather like the latter.
Once the initial discomfort of that passes, Persepolis Rising ups its game considerably by introducing the Laconian forces as a powerful new player on the scene. There was enough foreshadowing in the previous two books to allow Laconia's rise to feel reasonably organic and the authors do a good job of fleshing out the empire and its hierarchy by using Laconian military officer Santiago Singh as a POV character. There's also some good characterisation as Singh makes choices that seem reasonably logical in isolation but rapidly escalate towards disaster.
Elsewhere, the Rocinante crew get stuck in a very tricky situation and have to escape. This is a fairly good story, but it feels like it should have been a much briefer episode in a larger story. Instead, huge events are happening but then we cut back to our regular heroes plotting to escape...and then plotting some more...and then at the end of the novel they (spoilers!) escape. The main storyline here is treading a bit too much water.
Still, there's some very good characterisation and the authors pull off a major shift in the underlying paradigm of the series relatively successfully. Persepolis Rising (****) is available now in the UK and USA.
The Expanse #8: Tiamat's Wrath
The Laconian Empire has conquered the Solar system and most of the colony worlds established through the ring space. A resistance movement led by the crewmembers of the Rocinante is hoping to win back the freedom of the individual worlds, but High Consul Winston Duarte has taken James Holden captive. As tensions rise, Duarte makes the bold decision to declare war on the unknown, possibly unknowable aliens that killed the creators of the protomolecule, a war that will have unforeseen consequences.
Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth and penultimate novel in The Expanse, moving the series decisively towards its endgame with the conflict against the unknown aliens beginning in force. This is the moment that The Expanse has been building towards for a decade, with the true conflict finally getting underway.
It's a shame, then, that it feels anti-climactic. Part of the problem in this latter part of the series is that it feels like it is trying to do too much in too little space: the conquest of the Solar system by the Laconians happened very rapidly (and mostly off-screen) in the previous book and in this book the resistance movement forms and takes action with almost indecent haste. Persepolis Rising did at least benefit from the tight focus on the Rocinante crew trying to escape Medina Station and using that as a lens through which other events unfolded. Tiamat's Wrath is a much more epic, widescreen book which tries to tell the story across a number of fast-moving fronts, but in almost exactly the same page count. This results in a much faster-paced story where events happen quickly and sometimes without enough setup.
We've been here before, and in fact Tiamat's Wrath forms the second half of a duology that began with Persepolis Rising, and in doing so comes across as a near beat-for-beat retread of the previous duology (Nemesis Games and Babylon's Ashes): in the first book a huge, epic, game-changing event takes place with apparently massive ramifications for the series, and in the second it is wrapped up with almost indecent haste, both times relying on an important female character in the enemy camp deciding to swap sides. The structural similarities between the two duologies can leave the reader with a nagging sense of deja vu. The pieces are different but the game is being played the same way.
There is also the problem that we still know very little about the extradimensional alien threat. We know they're bad news, but their motivations, capabilities and real level of threat remain unclear after eight books out of nine in the series. It does feel a little like the situation with the Others in A Song of Ice and Fire, where we're supposed to be wary of this species but we don't really know what they want so it means their level of threat remains vague. The stakes, rather than being made clear or raised, are instead simply left undefined.
As usual, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (who together make up the gestalt entity known as James S.A. Corey) deliver a fast-paced, moderately well-written space opera yarn with some exciting battles, interesting plot twists and some decent characterisation, but also one that feels like it is repeating earlier beats from the series and still leaving a lot of information undisclosed before heading into the final volume of the series. Tiamat's Wrath (***) is solid but occasionally feels like a detailed plot summary of a novel rather than a novel in its own right. The book is available now in the UK and USA.