Review:
Echoes of the Imperium, by Nicholas & Olivia Atwater
| Series: |
Tales of the Iron Rose #1 |
| Publisher: |
Starwatch Press |
| Copyright: |
2024 |
| ISBN: |
1-998257-04-5 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
547 |
Echoes of the Imperium is a steampunk fantasy adventure novel, the
first of a projected series. There is another novella in the series,
A Matter of Execution, that takes place chronologically before this
novel, but which I am told that you should read afterwards. (I have not
yet read it.) If Olivia Atwater's name sounds familiar, it's probably for
the romantic fantasy
Half a Soul. Nicholas Atwater is her husband.
William Blair, a goblin, was a child sailor on the airship
HMS
Caliban during the final battle that ended the Imperium, and an
eyewitness to the destruction of the capital. Like every imperial solider,
that loss made him an Oathbreaker; the fae Oath that he swore to defend
the Imperium did not care that nothing a twelve-year-old boy could have
done would have changed the result of the battle. He failed to kill
himself with most of the rest of the crew, and thus was taken captive by
the Coalition.
Twenty years later, William Blair is the goblin captain of the airship
Iron Rose. It's an independent transport ship that takes various
somewhat-dodgy contracts and has to avoid or fight through pirates. The
crew comes from both sides of the war and has built their own working
truce. Blair himself is a somewhat manic but earnest captain who doesn't
entirely believe he deserves that role, one who tends more towards wildly
risky plans and improvisation than considered and sober decisions. The
rest of the crew are the sort of wild mix of larger-than-life personality
quirks that populate swashbuckling adventure books but leave me dubious
that stuffing that many high-maintenance people into one ship would go as
well as it does.
I did appreciate the gunnery knitting circle, though.
Echoes of the Imperium is told in the first person from Blair's
perspective in two timelines. One follows Blair in the immediate aftermath
of the war, tracing his path to becoming an airship captain and meeting
some of the people who will later be part of his crew. The other is the
current timeline, in which Blair gets deeper and deeper into danger by
accepting a risky contract with unexpected complications.
Neither of these timelines are in any great hurry to arrive at some
destination, and that's the largest problem with this book.
Echoes
of the Imperium is long, sprawling, and unwilling to get anywhere near
any sort of a point until the reader is deeply familiar with the horrific
aftermath of the war, the mountains guilt and trauma many of the
characters carry around, and Blair's impostor syndrome and feelings of
inadequacy. For the first half of this book, I was so bored. I almost
bailed out; only a few flashes of interesting character interactions and
hints of world-building helped me drag myself through all of the tedious
setup.
What saves this book is that the world-building is a delight. Once the
characters
finally started engaging with it in earnest, I could not
put it down. Present-time Blair is no longer an Oathbreaker because he was
forgiven by a fairy; this will become important later. The sites of great
battles are haunted by ghostly echoes of the last moments of the lives of
those who died (hence the title); this will become very important later.
Blair has a policy of asking no questions about people's pasts if they're
willing to commit to working with the rest of the crew; this, also, will
become important later. All of these tidbits the authors drop into the
story and then ignore for hundreds of pages do have a payoff if you're
willing to wait for it.
As the reader (too) slowly discovers, the Atwaters' world is set in a war
of containment by light fae against dark fae. Instead of being inscrutable
and separate, the fae use humans and human empires as tools in that war.
The fallen Imperium was a bastion of fae defense, and the war that led to
the fall of that Imperium was triggered by the price its citizens paid for
that defense, one that the fae could not possibly care less about. The
creatures may be out of epic fantasy and the technology from the imagined
future of Victorian steampunk, but the politics are that of the Cold War
and containment strategies. This book has a lot to say about colonialism
and empire, but it says those things subtly and from a fantasy slant, in
a world with magical Oaths and direct contact with powers that are both
far beyond the capabilities of the main characters and woefully deficient
in in humanity and empathy. It has a bit of the feel of Greek mythology if
the gods believed in an icy realpolitik rather than embodying the
excesses of human emotion.
The second half of this book was fantastic. The found-family vibe among a
crew of high-maintenance misfits that completely failed to cohere for me
in the first half of the book, while Blair was wallowing in his feelings
and none of the events seemed to matter, came together brilliantly as soon
as the crew had a real problem and some meaty world-building and plot to
sink their teeth into. There is a delightfully competent teenager, some
satisfying competence porn that Blair finally stops undermining, and a
sharp political conflict that felt emotionally satisfying, if perhaps not
that intellectually profound. In short, it turns into the fun, adventurous
romp of larger-than-life characters that the setting promises. Even the
somewhat predictable mid-book reveal worked for me, in part because the
emotions of the characters around that reveal sold its impact.
If you're going to write a book with a bad half and a good half, it's
always better to put the good half second. I came away with very positive
feelings about
Echoes of the Imperium and a tentative willingness
to watch for the sequel. (It reaches a fairly satisfying conclusion, but
there are a lot of unresolved plot hooks.) I'm a bit hesitant to recommend
it, though, because the first half was not very fun. I want to say that
about 75% of the first half of the book could have been cut and the book
would have been stronger for it. I'm not completely sure I'm right, since
the Atwaters were laying the groundwork for a lot of payoff, but I wish
that groundwork hadn't been as much of a slog.
Tentatively recommended, particularly if you're in the mood for steampunk
fae mythology, but know that this book requires some investment.
Technically,
A Matter of Execution comes first, but I plan to read
it as a sequel.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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