Review:
Embers of War, by Gareth L. Powell
| Series: |
Embers of War #1 |
| Publisher: |
Titan Books |
| Copyright: |
February 2018 |
| ISBN: |
1-78565-519-1 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
312 |
The military leadership of the Outward faction of humanity was meeting on
the forest world of Pelapatarn, creating an opportunity for the
Conglomeration to win the war at a stroke. Resistance was supposed to be
minimal, since the Outward had attempted to keep the conference secret
rather than massing forces to protect it. But the Outward resistance was
stronger than expected, and Captain Deal's forces would not be able to
locate and assassinate the Outward leadership before they could escape.
She therefore followed orders from above her and ordered the four incoming
Carnivore heavy cruisers to jump past the space battle and bomb the
planet. The entire planet.
The Carnivores' nuclear and antimatter weaponry reduced the
billion-year-old sentient jungle of Pelapatarn to ash.
Three years later, Sal Konstanz is a ship captain for the House of
Reclamation, a strictly neutral search and rescue force modeled after a
long-vanished alien fleet that prioritizes preservation of life above all
else. Anyone can join Reclamation, provided that they renounce their
previous alliances and devote themselves to the Reclamation cause. Sal
and her crew member Alva Clay were Outward. The ship medic was
Conglomeration. So was the ship: the
Trouble Dog, a sentient AI
heavy cruiser built to carry an arsenal of weapons and three hundred crew,
and now carrying three humans and a Druff mechanic. More precisely, the
Trouble Dog was one of the four Carnivores that destroyed
Pelapatarn.
Meanwhile, Ona Sudak, a popular war poet, is a passenger on a luxury
cruise on the liner
Geest van Amsterdam, which is making an
unscheduled stop in the star system known as the Gallery. The Gallery is
the home of the Objects: seven planets that, ten thousand years earlier,
were carved by unknown aliens into immense sculptures for unknown reasons.
The Objects appear to be both harmless and mysterious, making them an
irresistible tourist attraction for the liner passengers. The Gallery is
in disputed space, but no one was expecting serious trouble. They
certainly weren't expecting the
Geest van Amsterdam to be attacked
and brought down on the Object known as the Brain, killing nearly everyone
aboard. The
Trouble Dog is the closest rescue ship.
This book was... fine. It's a perfectly serviceable science fiction novel
that didn't stand out for me, which I think says more about the current
excellent state of the science fiction field than about this book. When I
was a teenager reading Asimov, Niven, and Heinlein, I would have devoured
this. It compares favorably to minor Niven or Heinlein (
The
Integral Trees, for example, or
Double
Star), but the bar for excellent science fiction is just so much higher
now.
The best character in this book (and the reason why I read it) is the
Trouble Dog. I love science fiction about intelligent space ships,
and she did not disappoint. The AI ships in this book are partly made
from human and dog neurons, so their viewpoint is mostly human but with
some interesting minor variations. And the
Trouble Dog would be a
great character even if she weren't an intelligent ship: ethical,
aggressive, daring, and introspective, with a nuanced relationship with
her human crew.
Unfortunately,
Embers of War has four other viewpoint characters,
and Powell chose to write them all in the first person. First person
narration depends heavily on a memorable and interesting character because
the reader is so thoroughly within their perspective. This works great
for the
Trouble Dog, and is fine for Nod, the Druff who serves as
the ship mechanic. (Nod's perspective is intriguing, short, almost
free-verse musings, rather than major story segments.) Sal, the ship
captain, is a bit of a default character, but I didn't mind her much.
Neither of the other two viewpoint characters are interesting enough to
warrant the narrative attention. The Conglomerate agent Ashton Childe has
such an uninteresting internal monologue that I would have liked the
character better if he'd only been seen through other people's viewpoints,
and although Powell needs some way to show Ona Sudak's view of events, I
didn't think her thoughts added much to the story.
The writing is adequate but a bit clunky: slightly flat descriptions, a
bit too predictable at the sentence level, and rarely that memorable.
There is a bit of fun world-building of the ancient artifact variety and a
couple of decent set pieces (and one rather-too-obvious
Matrix
homage that I didn't think was as effective as the author did), but most
of the story is focused on characters navigating their lives and
processing trauma from the war. The story kept me turning the pages with
interest, but I also doubt it will surprise anyone who has read much
science fiction. I suspect a lot of it is setup for the following two
books of the trilogy, and there are plenty of hooks for more stories in
this universe.
I really wanted a first-person story from the perspective of the
Trouble Dog, possibly with some tight third-person interludes
showing Ona Sudak's story. What I got instead was entertaining but not
memorable enough to stand out in the current rich state of science
fiction. I think I'm invested enough in this story to want to read the
next book, though, so that's still a recommendation of sorts.
Followed by
Fleet of Knives.
Rating: 6 out of 10
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