The Sundering By Jon Walters Williams

The Sundering

By Jon Walters Williams

I reviewed the first book in this series in September of last year. Since fate seems to have decreed 2020 the year of “get on with those series you were meaning to finish” I decided to end May with book two of this series. Since it hasn't even been a year yet, I won't go into who Mr. Williams is or the details of the setting. Just know this is one of those eternal space empires that was set up by an alien species to enforce eternal stasis and eternal stasis of course fell apart when said aliens weren't here to enforce it. So now the Praxis (It wasn’t that kind of Praxis, comrades. It was rigid semi-feudal structure.), as the space empire is called, is writhing in the grasp of a savage civil war. The insectoid Naxids, who were the first species brought under the yoke, believe they should become the ruling race of the empire. Of course the nobility which is made up of members from all six species of the empire is split, with the members of the other five species disagreeing with the idea of being demoted. Things didn't go great for the majority government however as the Naxids were striking from surprise (And the empire had grown so fucking decadent that they were not doctrinally, strategically, materially, tactically, or institutionally ready to wage a war of any kind. Or even, really, meaningful war games. The war games were dog-and-pony shows.). The home fleet of the capital Zanshaa was savaged by the Naxid fleet and only an insanely brave strike by one of our protagonists Lady Caroline Sula could have been considered a success in that battle. Lucky, that wasn't the only battle in the war, as our other protagonist Gareth Martinez managed to pull out a win and was rewarded richly for doing so. And so our book begins, quick note there will be spoilers here for the first book The Praxis, you have been warned.

Despite our main characters' efforts however the majority government is in real trouble; the Naxid surprise strike was an effective one. Despite heavy casualties, the Naxid fleet is now the larger fleet and it's only a matter of time until they march on the capital. A capital that can't be defended. However, even victory has proven costly for the Naxids, as traditional tactics meant for attacking people (Read: Brutally conquering them with M/AM annihilation warheads from the safety of orbit) who don't have the same numbers or technology lead to bloodbaths when used against forces in comparable numbers and technological level (They even did war-games internally. The problem was, the outcomes were always pre-determined and scripted, with commanders rewarded for the adherence to doctrine and their timing when executing their pre-scripted attacks and maneuvers.). The strength of both sides is scattered throughout the empire though, and with the first battles being the kind that would make modern admirals disgusted to be on the winning side of, never mind the losing side; both factions find themselves forced to pause to gather their strength and rebuild to replace their losses, locked in the one thing that has never happened to the Praxis before. A prolonged war. As Martinez and Sula start working on new tactics and new ideas to try and win the war (They are almost the only people with any sense, from my recollection.{There are junior officers who are very helpful but don’t have the education or experience to come up with stuff on their own}), they run into an opponent they don't have an answer for, their superiors. Their successes have bred resentment, as Sula's on the book parents (I'll explain) were traitors executed by the Legion of Diligence, and Martinez is a backwater provincial noble with a horrible accent. That they're the two most successful and skilled officers of the war is deeply embarrassing to the top tier of the nobility, which can't provide any officers who even come close (See what I mean?). It's not enough that the two best warfighters are a pair of barely noble nobodies with no patrons and connections, but they also want to throw out the book that the navy has been using for over 3400 years (I should note that's older than many of today's spoken languages). As you can imagine resistance is fierce, however, the officers who have actually been in combat have had their resentment blunted by their desire to survive (The desire to live and not get cooked inside their ships from the radiation of a M/AM annihilation is a powerful antidote against stupidity.{Or the heavy casualties act as a powerful selection pressure, you decide readers!}). The old tactics which involve clustering in tight groups and moving in highly scripted maneuvers that their enemies know as well as they do are a death sentence and that's been graphically proven over and over. Another note that while Lady Sula is still just a Lt, Martinez was made Captain and as such is writing reports on junior officers. This means he has marked men and women as unfit for command and/or combat duty, including men and women from well connected, powerful families. So Martinez's list of enemies is growing by the day. Including in his own family as one of those young men that Martinez has to blackball is the lover of his little sister. Let's talk about Martinez's family shall we?

Captain Martinez is the youngest son, with an older brother and two older sisters. We learn in this book that Martinez is likely his Mother's son in temperament, because Roland, the eldest son is clearly formed in his Father's image. See Poppa Martinez tried to break into Zanshaa high society many decades ago and was run off as the provincial pretender he was. Poppa Martinez spent his social exile building up his fiefdom into an industrial powerhouse and raking in enough money to buy and sell his social betters any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but money wasn't enough. Poppa Martinez realized he needed tactics and an opening. Roland was trained in the array of economic, political, and social tactics needed to shatter that glass ceiling and propel the family into the .01%. The war has given them the opening of their dreams as they work to put the cream of Zanshaa's nobility in their debt and Roland is working frantically to wedge that opening over wider. This involves cutting loans to families whose properties have been seized by the Naxid government, working with Naxids who are loyal to the majority government, and wringing every military and civilian contract that their fief can fulfill at the best terms possible to keep the coffers full. Oh and of course making marriages for the Martinez sisters to powerful families, This becomes a problem as the man that Captain Martinez blackballs? May be his little sister's lover but it's not her fiance and as the emotional fallout starts to ramp up, keeping that secret is becoming difficult (Yeah that is definitely something of a problem…). Additionally, as Captain Martinez finds himself exiled from ship duty due to his superiors' resentment, the cost of staying relevant to the war effort might involve putting himself up on the marriage block. If only these people would let him fight the damn war and save their hides Captain Martinez would be perfectly happy but as always people have to drag politics into it. Oh and Captain Martinez has to figure out if he can salvage his romance with Lady Sula and maybe merge that into his family's marriage demand, as despite everything her family name is an old and until recently respectable one... Or is it?

As many of you likely remember from the last review I hinted that Lady Caroline Sula had a dark secret of her own. She wasn't born Lady Caroline Sula, she was born Gredel, the illegitimate daughter of the mistress of a crime boss. Despite her many, many talents Gredel was locked out of developing, no schooling beyond the basics available to her, no opportunities for career or advancement (And this, kids, is why inherited privilege of any kind is an absolute fucking waste.) since even becoming a model or actress required some noble backing you (even that would be a waste of her talents mind you although she'd be good at both). Instead, Gredel was sinking into the same life path as her mother when she ran into the real Lady Caroline Sula, a noblewoman who could have been her identical twin. A young woman of barely 15, her parents had been executed when she was very young for treason and she was thrown out of her foster family when the father of the said family seduced her (Because of course, you punish the child rape victim. Ah, nobility. Or, real life, really. God fuck this planet, I want off.). Sula had a trust fund that would let her live in comfort but not much else. So she spent her time partying, drugging, and drinking into an early grave because... What else was there? Except that her birth still entitled her to a spot in the naval academy and if she did well officer rank. The original Lady Sula however knew that she would be stuck as a Lt forever and so didn't care. Gredel, on the other hand? She thought life as an eternal Lt sounded better than being her Mother. She forged records, murdered, lied, studied, and sweated and worked her ass off to get to a place that some people just get dropped into for being born (Good for you Gredel! Usurp the aristocrats! Kill them and take their place! Just kill them all and have done!). Since then she's made it a point to outperform all of them out of a combination of trying to attract a patron for further promotion and spite, which is the greatest of motivations honestly. With the war kicking off, Sula has gone into overdrive. It's not enough for her to excel, she knows this is her one opening in a lifetime to claw the kind of advantages that others get out of the system and she means to do it. Of course, Martinez is going to complicate things enormously, as love interests tend to do. In the meantime, Sula has been shuffled off into an obscure logistic division for the crime of making radical suggestions on war strategy that are completely right. Her response to this is to volunteer for ground combat duty. Which is something they're even worse at than ship combat on account of preferring to let the police deal with uprisings and insurgents, or just orbitally bombarding any population that the police can't handle. Course if the Naxids take Zanshaa they can't bombard the capital city built by the founders of the Empire... Can they?

In the Sundering, we're watching a civilization stumbling around trying to learn how to fight a war against a peer power. Made worse by the fact that the peer power in question is itself. Civil wars are inherently messy and ugly things that are better to avoid nine times out of ten. The tenth being a situation where not fighting it means living the rest of your life under someone's heel or watching a bunch of sore losers carve up your country (We all live under the heel of capitalists.{I suppose we could live under the heels of the party members instead}). Mr. Williams takes the time to show us the internal workings going on here as the elite and military classes of the Praxis try to adapt to the new reality, some more successfully than others. He also takes the time to show us that for many in the underclasses of the Praxis, it doesn't matter who wins, one overclass who monopolizes power and wealth is much the same as another one if you have next to nothing (And they have created a fantastic system to keep those underclasses from rising up and spitting their masters on pikes.). As one character put to Sula, it doesn't matter who takes all the good and decent jobs if you're not allowed to have a job in the first place. Which explains why the majority government isn't seeing a lot of buy-in from the populace. Not that the populace is resisting mind you, resistance is too dangerous for them. They're simply not putting in any extra effort just because they're at war. This shows the kind of disconnect that can develop between the elite classes of society and everyone else. It's in little touches like this that Mr. Williams shows amazing talent in examining just what kind of society the Praxis is and what the implications of that are. I'm honestly glad to be rereading this series (as I mentioned in the last review my first read-through was in college). The Sundering by Jon Walters Williams gets an A.

I also give it my Stamp of Approval.
So this review was voted for by our ever-wise Patrons, if you would like a voice on upcoming reviews and themes for as a little as a dollar a month, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Next week, we start World War II month with, Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe by Kathy Peiss! As always thank you for your support, stay safe, and Keep Reading!

Gold Magic By Dr. Bruce Davis

Gold Magic

By Dr. Bruce Davis

Before I start, a quick disclaimer, I know Dr. Davis. I am a friend of the family and consider his oldest son one of my best friends. Your editor has known and been friends with the family since he was a child (He’s family. Straight-up.). Also I got my copy of this novel for free. So while everything in this review is my honest opinion, I feel it best if I'm upfront with y'all.

Doc Davis got his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago in the 1970s, which might as well be a whole other world given how much has changed since then (Tell me about it…). He completed his surgical residency at Bethesda Naval Hospital and served with the Navy as a surgeon for 14 years. During that 14 years he met his wife (Who is a nurse.), got married, had children, and served in the first Gulf War. He currently lives in Phoenix working as a general and trauma surgeon with his wife (who is also a doctor [of nursing, we need to make this clear because the roles in medicine are different] and fair warning, a very good shot [Mom is scary. Dad can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a street-sweeper. The Hippocratic oath enforces itself ;) ]), surrounded by large dogs and when he can, enjoying time with his sons and grandchild. Now, I should note that Gold Magic isn't his first book, nor is it the first work of his we've reviewed. Among his prior works to show up on this review series are Queen Mab Courtesy, the For Profit Series, and Platinum Magic. I honestly recommend all of them and you can find most of them at the publisher of this book's web site for Brick Cave Media, we'll include a link at the end as they are a small independent publishing outfit and we’d like to show our support for them. Just leave them a note that we sent ya.

Gold Magic is the second book in the Magic Law series, which is about the problems of enforcing the law in a world where magic has been industrialized to the point of common use. How common? People call each other on personal mirrors and leave text messages. There are magic weapons that fire needles that can be enchanted with anything from lethal force to tranquilizers. Enchanted air sleds provide personal transport. This world isn't a carbon copy of ours with magic serving the role of technology however, it's evolved in ways that are different from ours (Which I like, because most of the time someone tries to do urban fantasy, they go to great lengths to create a world that is somehow just our world, with wizards in it.). The biggest differences seem to be social because some people are born with the ability to kill someone with their brains and others... Aren't (The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father. Sorry I’ll just be over here…). Now Doc Davis avoids the mistake of info-dumping (where characters have long conversations about the world simply to inform the audience) instead leaving the readers to infer facts about the world from character actions and statements. Which can honestly be the most intriguing way to world-build as your readers have to assemble the world from pieces you leave them, making it something of a mystery as well as the one that gives you the most maneuvering room as a writer. The books mainly take place in the nation of the Commonwealth, a multi-ethnic state of Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs. It's a monarchy, which seems to be a compromise as the prior government (called the Magisterium) was made up of mages (Look bro, once the wizards start calling themselves The Magisterium, shit’s gonna go downhill fast). This so traumatized everyone that it's the law that the throne can't go to anyone with magical talent and everyone agrees that a politically powerful mage, especially one who exercised their magical power against their enemies, would be worth taking up arms over and starting a civil war. That's not a position you get to without a whole lot of history behind it (I mean, yeah…). Of course not every nation takes that position, the Commonwealth's neighbor the Havens (a state dominated by old and traditionalist elf lords) for example doesn't seem to have a problem with its rulers and political class (land-owning, wealthy elves all) having and using magical power. The Havens is also a rather repressive place for a lot of people (Well gee! It’s ruled as a mago-plutocracy apparently! Shocking, that!). For example, in the Havens, Orc's testimony can't be used in court without supporting dwarf, human, or elf testimony (Woooow). It can be used in the Commonwealth which as a matter of policy grants all races equality before the law. However, the Orcs are incredibly disadvantaged and face a lot of economic and social discrimination, that the prejudiced justify by invoking prior history.

This is a problem for our protagonist Simon Buckley, a member of the King's Peacekeepers and leader of a Magic Enforcement Team. Simon is a liberal who pushes for fair treatment for Orcs and other races but is often against the memories of the longer-lived races, including elves who remember first-hand warring with orcs out to kill everyone and Dwarves who learned about it from their Fathers and Mothers (And this dynamic makes perfect sense. When you’re old, you get set in your ways, and if you got set in your ways 300 years ago you’re not going to be changing things very fast in response to changing social conditions.). He has a better understanding of this than you would think, as his father was murdered by Orcs when he was ten and he was raised by Hal Stonebender, a dwarf Keeper from that age. This is done well as we see Simon using Dwarf figures of speech and mannerisms without even thinking of it. For that matter I do have to note Doc Davis' attention to detail in the language used by all the characters, for example no one says Okay or Goodbye or uses the causal slang of the United States. Instead characters say things like All Good, or Good Parting or other slang that is easily figured out by the reader but enforces the idea that the Commonwealth isn't just some magical USA but an entirely different society. It is also kind of interesting that despite their relationship, he not only works in the same department but on the same team as Hal, as his direct boss. Hal has been refusing promotions since before Simon was born. Of course, that's not the full extent of Simon's dealing with other races, he was engaged to an Elf woman, who was killed by a terrorist bomb (before the beginning of Platinum Magic) and is currently dating another Elf woman, Sylvie who is a member of the Haven Rangers. This relationship is fairly well-accepted and we see that even in the Havens, human+elf pairings aren't considered out of bounds. Of course that doesn't make their relationship easy or simple and things may get even more complicated by the event of this story.

The Hollows, the section of the capital city of Cymbeline where Orcs live and work is on the verge of boiling over. A pair of gangs are building power and clashing over the drug trade and general control of the underworld. When four Orc children are found murdered as part of a ritual of Blood Magic, accusations are flying back and forth and everyone is moments from reaching for their weapons (Because of course, racism leading to desperation and gangs vying for power means we have to pogrom the victims of racism… Dad and I don’t agree on much politically but he is right on the nose here with how this shit is self-reinforcing sometimes.). But the more Simon looks into this the more things seem odd. While the children were originally from the Hollows, they're throwaways. Children turned out by their parents due to a lack of resources, where Orc parents will turn out their oldest children so they can feed their youngest. However, at least some of the children are wearing what seems to be uniforms and no one remembers seeing them around for some time. Simon, however, isn't afraid to investigate and he used to work in the Hollows as a beat cop; so he knows who to lean on for information. He also has the help of a team that he put together himself, including the new guy, a Half-Orc named Kermal. Having Kermal might help get information out of the Orc residents who distrust cops for a lot of good reasons. Simon also has to worry about resentment building up in his team; as well as resentment from Kermal who feels like he's only given jobs or not on account of his race as opposed to his talents and abilities. Talents and skills he might be underselling due to just who his parents were. Of course, he also has to try keeping the peace between the two Orc gangs and keep a gang war from going hot before he can finish the investigation and find the murderers. He can't be too overt about that though, because then he's stepping on the ego of the guy who replaced him on the Hollows beat. A peacekeeper who already resents him. On top of that he also has to worry about more rarified entanglements, as the orc children in question have links to a school for disadvantaged children. A school with noble and royal backers and connections leading to the top. Just in case you thought Simon didn't have enough balls to keep in the air? Sylvie gives him a call to let him know there are also missing Orc children in the Havens. What's tying all of this together and can Simon follow the threads of evidence to the answers to all these mysteries? Does he even have time before the Hollows starts going up in smoke and everyone is staring at massive street violence in the very capital itself?

Now I do need to address something that is often called coding, where fantasy races become stand-ins for real-world races (It is broader than this as well. Where a character or even a race takes on traits that are often associated with a minority group either to serve as an analogy for a conflict that that author does not want to tackle directly, or to demonize that group with dog-whistles. Zootopia, for instance, does it pretty blatantly with predators as coded black. To the point of actually using elements of a very real and not a “conspiracy theory” conspiracy by the US government to help the Contras fund their war against the Sandinistas by funneling crack into black communities, as a plot point. Scar is often seen as gay-coded as well but the less I talk about The Lion King the better, I am a biologist and a communist, the whole thing makes me scream. Anyway, for a long time the only portrayals of homosexuality allowed in film had to be both subtexual and villainous. Ursula was based on a real drag queen. Granted Divine was a very “unique” individual and the portrayal was likely a loving homage.). Doc Davis does try pretty damn hard to avoid this, the Orcs history doesn't mesh with the history of any minority group in the states for example (Yeah, but the social phenomenon of racism is such that it’s just not really possible to avoid the coding.). They are loathed and hated because in the past they led a genocidal campaign of warfare against everyone else. Additionally most Orcs are immigrants from the Orcish homelands, called the Azeri Empire. So they also have the stigma of foreigners with strange ways and customs coming over here to take our jobs. Never mind that the jobs they get are ones no Human, Dwarf, or Elf would want in the first place (See what I mean?). However their treatment does invoke some of the treatment that modern-day and historical minorities in the US have lived and are living through and it would take a dense reader not to notice that on some level. Whether it's being trapped in a racial ghetto, facing unfair policing and dealing with glass ceilings that lock them out of certain trades and social positions. Doc also does a good job of showing us that the reason this treatment continues isn't that the Orcs are any less capable or trustworthy than anyone else but because there are massive economic and social machines that benefit from it, whether it be the Elves in the Havens profiting from indentured laborers in the fields or the vast magical industries of the Commonwealth being run on cheap Orc Labor (He’s so very close sometimes…). Just like our world, justifications are often created to cover for the profit that the status quo gives and if you can ground it in a historical grievance? So much the better (The bourgeoisie - or aristocrats if those exist - will always create or perpetuate these wedges to keep the working class divided from itself and thus maintain their stranglehold on power.). So those who profit the most, fight the hardest to prevent any improvements in the situation.

Doc Davis gives us a tense, interesting mystery with a lot of moving parts to keep track of. Set in a world that feels very real partly because of how familiar it is, while being rather alien in some respects. It's a fast-moving story however so you need to keep track of everything or you'll miss something. So I would tell people not to be afraid to reread a page or five if you think you'll need to. The characters are well done too. Simon comes across as a man who honestly just wants to stop treating each other like crap and be decent to one another. You know, for a change. That said he isn't perfect, and I can understand how Kermal feels like he's the Orc cop on Simon's squad instead of the orc Cop if you catch my meaning. Something that Simon himself has to confront in the story, although having more space to it in would have been nice. The biggest issue I have here is pacing, at 250 pages, there is a lot to unpack and I feel we could have used more space to unpack it in. For example the case brings up some personal issues between Simon and Sylvie that I feel aren't entirely resolved and we don't get to see Molly, Hal's wife in this story (Honestly, this reflects reality. A lot of cops’ marriages are troubled for a host of reasons.). Honestly, though the lack of space and the fast pacing are the only complaints I have with the book. It seems I'm spending a lot of time in reviews yelling at authors to hurry it up or slow it down and in this case I'm asking for it to be slowed down. Still, all things considered, this was a great read and I really enjoyed it. I hope to see Simon and his crew back on the job soon. Gold Magic by Doc Bruce Davis gets a A-

So this bonus review is a bit late due to technical issues and I apologize for that but here it is! We hope you enjoyed this review. I am linking to brickcave media below, they're an independent publishing company that makes most of their sales on the convention circuit but with the convention circuit down, there go most of their sales. Now that said, they didn't ask me to link you and have no idea I'm doing so. But I do like to try and support the independents out there when I can. So give them a look, most of their prices are pretty reasonable. Next week, we return with The Sundering by Jon Walter Willaims to end the month of May and after that it's on to World War II month in June! Our vote for the books in June is still open and you can join that poll for as little as a dollar a month at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Until then, stay safe and keep reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Normal text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

https://brickcavemedia.com/

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2018/04/platinum-magic-by-dr-bruce-davis.html

Abbadon's Gate By James S.A. Corey

Abbadon's Gate

By James S.A. Corey

This is my year to push through the series I've been meaning to get back to I guess (Well, what else are you going to do? 2020 is even worse than 2016.). Abbadon's Gate is the 3rd novel in the science fiction series the Expanse. Before I start talking about the setting and the series, we should address the author or rather authors. James S.A. Corey is the pen name for the writers of the Expanse, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Daniel James Abraham was born on November 14, 1969, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He attended the University of New Mexico from 1987 to 1995 and graduated with a Bachelors in Biology (Oh Hi! Well the authors did do their homework so...now I know why.). He often jokes that he spent four years getting his degree and four years getting his education (You know, even for me, that’s true. I wouldn’t be as well-rounded as I think I am without the general education requirements and what I took beyond the bare minimums.). In 1998 he signed up for the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, which gives authors six weeks of critiques with six different instructors. This led to him selling two short stories and his career got started. He wrote fantasy under his name and urban fantasy under the name MLN Hanover. He also got married to his long time sweetheart Katherine with whom he has a daughter (aaawww). This brings us to Ty Franck, who was born on May 18, 1969, in Portland Oregon. Many years ago now Mr. Franck was recruited to work on a science-fiction MMO, meant to be a competitor to World of Warcraft by going into a science fiction setting instead of a fantasy one (Dear God, I remember when WoW was new…). However, the backers of the project just didn't have the resources to make it happen. He had also been a contributor to George RR Martin's Wild Cards Universe (Which is insane. It’s almost like GRRM’s social circle and the Phoenix Metro area just… spawn authors, or something.{To be fair to GRRM, he has worked hard to boost other people’s careers instead of dragging them down. Whatever anyone thinks of his work, GRRM has been a good thing for the fantasy and science fiction novel writing industry in a lot of ways}). The co-creator of that universe, Melinda Snodgrass, knew that Mr. Martin needed an assistant and convinced him to hire Mr. Franck. This led to a regular gaming group made up of George RR Martin, Melinda Snodgrass, Ian Tregillis, and our authors here. Mr. Abraham noticed that Mr. Franck had a massive three-ring binder filled with background information about the solar system they were playing in and suggested they write a book together because Mr. Abraham hates world-building (But… that’s the fun part! {some people are more interested in writing scenes and characters}). Let's tackle that solar system and what's led up to book 3 shall we?

Now I did review the first two books but that was eons ago (I reviewed the first book in 2016!). So let's go from the top. In the 2300s Humanity has spread out across most of the solar system, with the great powers being Earth ruled by the UN and the Independent Martian Congressional Republic. Both of these powers are locked into a cold war and threatened by the new power, the rising Outer Planet Alliance (My sympathies should be very clear to you, because the OPA is largely anarchist, and I’m all about the left-unity). As humanity has not figured out how to generate gravity, except by rotation and acceleration, the OPA mostly represents the new ethnic group of the Belters. Belters are people who were born in the outer system and have lived their whole lives in very low gravity or zero gravity. They've existed long enough to create their own vibrant and a rather impenetrable culture and create an identity for themselves as a people separate from the planet-dwelling peoples of the solar system. The Belters were widely treated as an underclass, as most of the outer planet stations were owned by inner system corporations or colonial outposts for the UN or the MCR. However, fueled by their resentment and a desire to be treated as people worth consideration, they've managed to rise up and are a newly independent power. Humanity's squabbles aren't the only thing endangering the solar system, however. The discovery of an alien artifact that is over 2 billion years old kick-starts a series of events, with an entire city station of over a million people being turned into a horror;, broken down into their component parts and rearranged by an alien infectious agent called the protomolecule. This is no accident but was a remorseless and reckless science experiment by a mega-corporation who believed that they had something that would revolutionize human technology. James Holden, our protagonist managed to reveal the plot to humanity but too late to stop it. The remade station fires itself at earth but a last-ditch effort by a burnt-out cop named Miller (Fuckin’ class traitor…{He saved humanity, so be respectful}) managed to crash it on Venus. Only for the protomolecule to use Venus to build a giant ring that flies out into the outer system. The fleets of humanity begin a blockade of the ring, meaning for once to take things slowly and carefully before anyone does anything stupid and irreversible. They might as well try to hold back the tide with their teeth. A single belter kid, fueled by a desire to impress his crush, builds a slingshot ship - which builds up speed by using gravity assists from planets and moons - flies his ship into the ring and the ring takes that ship... Somewhere else (He also gets hilariously pulverized in the process. Of course, teenagers, no matter where they are from, are idiots.). Which is where our story begins.

Ever since the ring went up, Captain James Holden has been haunted. Literally. When he is alone he sees an apparition of Miller telling him that they need to talk. However, nothing Miller says makes any sense in context. Declaring a need to secure the crime scene and telling Holden he needs to clear the corners and the doors of a room before entering. As an aside, that is good advice but you also check the ceiling and floor as well as a general policy. Thankfully Holden has learned a few things since book one and isn't screaming this to everyone who can hear him. Nor is he keeping this a total secret, which would also be stupid. Just so I'm clear by what I mean here, if you have a brush with something beyond the understanding of man and start hearing and seeing shit that shouldn't be there, tell someone! Especially if it's a phantom of someone who died during that brush trying to tell you something! Don't tell everyone though. In this case, Holden tells the smartest person he can trust: his girlfriend and chief engineer Naomi Nagata. As Captain of the Rocinante, the salvaged or stolen (Legit salvage {I don’t know if it counts if the Martian Marines throws you onto the ship to save your life as the battleship explodes}) Martian multi-role frigate turned gun-ship/fast cargo mover for hire he has options. His first choice? Run as far away from the Ring as he possibly can and stay the hell away from it. Captain Holden never gets his first choice though, when legal difficulties over the ownership of the Rocinante trap the ship and it's crew in the dock (the physical and legal kind) his only chance to get into the black (physically and financially) is to take a job shuttling a documentary crew... Towards the ring.

Holden isn't the only one heading to the newly active Ring, the UN and the MCR are sending fleets of their own to investigate. Both fleets are heavily armed, the Martians are sending a good number of science ships and the UN is bringing a ship full of artistic and religious leaders to see it first hand (Which should tell you everything you need to know about both powers). Among them is Reverend Doctor Anna Volovodov, a Methodist Pastor who was asked to come because she was on Europa ministering to a flock of about 100 people and therefore not that far away (Prior comment aside, she’s pretty cool by the standards of clergy.). She leaves behind her wife and young daughter to witness history being made and it's an open question whether she'll survive history.

Dr. Volovodov is an intelligent woman who honestly believes in compassion, forgiveness, and doing the best she can for everyone (She’s clergy I would get along with, they exist but they’re not common.). She's going to be stressed to the limit here, as she is finding herself in a volatile situation full of people who don't believe in such things. Also on the Earth fleet is a girl with a secret, Melba Koh. Melba is a girl with a grudge against Holden and she has spent years shaping herself into the kind of weapon that can destroy him. It's not enough to kill him though, she needs to humiliate him and tear him down completely (Yeah, she’s crazy.). To do that she is going to turn herself into a one-woman conspiracy and wrecking crew and maybe end up dooming everyone in all the fleets being sent to the ring. Possibly everyone in the solar system if things get out of control enough. Anna and Melba, while not being the protagonists (Given they are both viewpoint characters and they have a lot of plot-agency… I’d argue that this story has multiple protagonists) of the story are the two main moral voices competing to drive the story. Anna advocates for forgiveness, justice, and compassion. She pushes for people to grow past fear and violence and to see that people from other planets are fellow human beings that we can work together with. Melba on the other hand is all about loyalty to your tribe over everything else and blood for blood. She is willing to reap vengeance at all costs, even if other people are the ones paying the price at the beginning of this story. As you might guess she is all about violence as a solution to life's problems. It’s how the other characters react to the two of them that drive a good part of the plot forward and their own meetings are rather pivotal as well.

Refusing to be left out the OPA is sending a single ship, the Behemoth, which started it's life being built as a generation ship for Mormons determined to leave the system (I have so many reasons to snicker, here. Incidentally, the Mormons sued the OPA over their using this ship to stop Eros from slamming into Earth). Well now it's the bootstrapped battleship of the OPA fleet, hastily retrofitted to try and look like a combat ship, while crewed by barely trained volunteers (Barely militarily trained. These people know how to fly ships {Yeah but flying the ship is only step one of the process, being able to fight it is an entirely different skill set that they lack. Of course they might not need it as the ship might just fly to pieces if its weapons are fired…}). Of course, it's an open question as to whether it can even survive firing its own weapons, never mind survive being shot at. But hopefully, it's size and the sheer amount of weapons welded to the hull will make enough of a statement that Earth and Mars won't try to cut the OPA out of any deals. Of course, to compound this, the captain's chair of the Behemoth is given to a Belter with little to no combat training or experience but good political connections and a degree in mathematics from Boston. To balance this out the XO slot is given to a Belter who... Has little combat training or experience. The man with the most experience but unfortunately loathed for being an Earthborn defector, is Carlos C. de Baca, aka Bull. Having been with the OPA since its beginnings as a ragged rebel group after defecting from the UN Marines. However thanks to prejudice and politics he's stuck as Chief of Security but he's committed to making it work and making sure this doesn't turn into a mess (Excuse me as I sigh mournfully. I love the OPA but god damn.).

As everyone realizes just what's on the other side of the ring and what the new stakes are, the odds of avoiding this turning into a steaming mess with consequences that could include the extinction of all life in the Solar System start dropping like a bomb. As the different agendas of not just the nations but also the individuals caught up in the situation collide, the question of just what does that ghost Holden keeps seeing, wants hangs over everything like a blade on a fraying rope. It's gonna take everything Bull, Anna, and the crew of the Rocinante can do to keep everyone alive but if they pull it off, they might just hand humanity a new lease on the future. Abaddon's Gate gives us a look at the best and worst in human nature and interestingly enough presents us a number of debates over the power of forgiveness and redemption over vengeance and fear. The ability of humanity to come together in the face of a common threat and people's ability to turn on each other at the worst possible moments. The strength of this novel is that both sides of these coins are allowed to be equally powerful and it's an open question what was the more powerful factor in this story. The fear and the rage that leads to violence and the quest for vengeance no matter the cost? The love and hope that allows for compassion and the forgiveness that allows us to make peace and move on to better futures? I find myself thinking that a reader could argue that this story supports either side based on their own point of view; at the same time the novel as a definite stance that fear, rage, love, and hope are all fundamentally part of human nature and will drive our future as long as we are recognizably human no matter how far we go or how long it takes to get there. Whether that's an optimistic or pessimistic message I'll leave to the reader to decide. One thing I did find optimistic however was the novel's stance that just because you did give into rage and fear, doesn't mean that forgiveness and compassion are lost to you, even if redemption is a long hard road to follow. If you haven't read the Expanse yet, be prepared for novels that will give you plenty of thrills and something to think about afterward and my recommendation is to get started. Abbadon's Gate by James S.A Corey gets an A.

So this novel was chosen by our ever-wise Patrons, who even as we speak are voting for the books to be reviewed in June and discuss a possible theme for the month of October. If you would like a voice, all it takes is a dollar a month and you get a vote in incoming reviews, theme months and more. Join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads to share your thoughts and make your views known. So this week there is going to be a special bonus review! Join us tomorrow for Gold Magic by Dr. Bruce Davis! Until then stay safe and keep reading!

red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
normal text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Challenges of the Deeps By Ryk E Spoor

Challenges of the Deeps

By Ryk E Spoor

It's been three years since we talked about the first book in this series, so I'll give you the CliffsNotes™ on Mr. Spoor because explaining the setting alone is gonna take a moment. Mr. Spoor is an American writer born in Nebraska in 1962. He's a rare example of getting into the writing business by getting into an argument (not a recommended path folks [I disagree.{Gonna say that picking a fight with an established writer and publisher is usually not gonna end with you being a published writer.}[Of course it won’t, but that wasn’t the point! I was being contrarian for its own sake!] {you see what I have to deal with folks?}), in this case with Eric Flint most famously known for his 1632 universe. The end result of that was Mr. Flint recommended Mr. Spoor to the owner of Baen books and here we are today. For more details I'd suggest looking at my review of Grand Central Arena, speaking of which this is the 3rd book in the series, and since it's been so long I'll cover the setting before diving into the book itself, believe me, you need the background. Quick note, there are spoilers ahead, I strongly encourage you to read this series before proceeding any further, just trust me you want to engage in this wild ride spoiler-free.

In the last decades of the 2300s, Humanity has a lot to celebrate. Not only have we spread across the solar system but our mastery of artificial intelligence, nanotech manufacturing, and fusion power combined with incredibly high-density power storage tech means that hunger and want have for all practical purposes been defeated (So Capitalism has collapsed. Huzzah!). Human governments have all but faded away from sheer disuse and the fact that everyone can build whatever they need and most of what they want in their backyards have done the same thing to corporations (Huzzah!). Now large projects still require groups to work together but this can often be done by people using artificial intelligence and combining resources to achieve their goals, or worse come to worse turning to mass crowdfunding, so the future is kickstarter. Now it's not perfect, in fact, one of the biggest justifications for what law enforcement and the government remains is a massive crime against humanity done by a bunch of nerds and fans of old entertainment. These people got together and built Hyperion station, were using a combination of genetic engineering, virtual reality, and more, they created people in the image of their heroes, heroes from old fiction. People who live in fake universes and had no idea they were doing so. Basically, these people created real flesh and blood people to unknowingly act out their fan fiction! I really hope I don't have to explain why that's bad to you readers (I should not need to explain this either. But yes, they did create slash-fanfic Matrix. That is fucked up. Don’t do that, fellow nerds, because that means Captain Morality and Dr. Red Anthrax are going to team up and you do NOT want that.). Of course, some of them figured it out, it went all to hell and thousands of people died. So I suppose even in the future where you have everything you could want, someone has to remind you not to be an overly entitled ass. Ariane Austin, our protagonist, was a racer; piloting spaceships through obstacle courses for the support of the masses and the thrill of victory. That is, until Dr. Simon Sandrisson approached her with proof he had invented FTL and wanted her to pilot the first manned ship. The lure of the unknown and the chance to go down in history couldn't be resisted. They found themselves jumping into something bigger than they could have imagined. Because FTL doesn't take you to another point in our space-time. It takes you to the Arena.

The Arena is a scale model of the entire universe, between 16 to 32 light-years in diameter, floating in a sky filled with storms and life of all kinds of description. Every solar system is represented by a sphere the top of which is life-bearing and there are gates that link every sphere to a massive construction called Grand Central where you can meet creatures from every end of the universe. The Arena is so old that there are species that evolved to full sapience as natives, so old that it predates every known species and culture that has access to it. Divided into factions great and small, this dizzying array of alien creatures have created a complex culture to govern their interactions and allow for coexistence enforced by the Arena itself. Whether it's a massive AI, some vast alien creature, or something else, the Arena enforces its own laws, both on the interaction of its sapient citizens and on the very laws of physics. For example, nuclear power doesn't work in Arena space, nor do artificial intelligences or most nanotechnology. The crew of the ship had to learn the rules quickly while navigating the politics of the arena and Ariane finds herself the new leader of the Faction of Humanity. The first book deals with the discovery of the Arena, learning its rules and facing off against greater factions eager to exploit humanity. In the process, Ariane finds herself in possession of powers that might as well be magic. Powers she can't control. The second book covers the reactions of everyone back home and humanity's expanding role within the Arena, as well as Ariane learning for herself just what it means to be the Leader of Humanity in the Arena and having to force the rest of human space to accept that. Because there just isn't time to hand things over to someone who doesn't understand what the Arena actually is and what the rules are because humanity has enemies. Both in the Blessed to Serve - a faction of aliens who are ruled by Artificial Intelligence who seized control of their creators and rule as gods - and the Molothos. The Molothos are a powerful race and faction, one that has been active in the arena longer than humanity has existed. They are also an incredibly hostile, xenophobic race, believing all other alien sapient creatures to be a lower order of creatures fit only for subjugation and exploitation (Such lovely neighbors… You know, you’d think that at some point everyone else would have had enough of the Molothos’ shit and kicked their teeth in.{The Molothos are a vast and powerful empire that can match just about anyone two on one, plus they’re an old species so they were here first, meaning they’ve had time to build up}). For the most part, they're held in check by the fact that the other factions are bound together in a web of alliances, favors, and treaties that mean war with one means war with dozens of others and the Molothos can't trump those numbers... Yet. However, Humanity isn't part of that web yet and we've personally pissed them off.

It's been a race against time to build the alliances and favors needed to make fighting Humanity too dangerous for the Molothos to attack and in the third book time might have run out. Because what's holding them back is the fact that they had no idea where our home sphere was but they're getting closer to figuring it out. Meanwhile, Ariane is running out of time as well, because if she doesn't get some instruction or figure out how to control her powers, she could kill herself and everyone for hundreds of miles around her (Yikes, that isn’t good at all…). When an enigmatic ally of humanity named Orphan suggests that she might get such a chance by paying back a debt to him and joining him on a trip to an unexplored part of the Arena, she decides to take that bet and brings with her two of the most dangerous people in the Arena. Marc DeQuesne and Sun Wu Kung, DeQuesne is based on a character from a very, very old science fiction series called SkyLark. Unlike the canon character, he's not a villain but was written to be the protagonist's best friend. Sun Wu Kung, as the vast majority of you clever readers have likely figured out was based on the Monkey King from the Journey West. As you can imagine both these men are incredibly strong, fast, and mentally capable. They and the other Hyperions may be humanity's best edge in the conflicts to come. First, they'll have to survive a journey into the dangerous unknown region of the Arena and confront an unknown power, one that terrifies Orphan, a being willing to engage the Blessed to Serve in a war alone for centuries. If they pull that off, they still have to get home in good enough shape to fight.

Because while humanity is marshaling all the forces it can bring to bear, the issue remains that most of humanity's deep space craft won't work in the arena (Because remember kids, Nuclear Power doesn’t work. No fission. No fusion. So what the hell are you powering your ships with? Chemical rockets?{There are various power sources}). So new ships have to be designed and built from the ground up or bought, begged or borrowed from friendly aliens. Additionally, crews have to be found and trained to pilot and fight these ships because the restrictions on artificial intelligence mean that there's a hard limit on how much automation you can throw on a ship. So Dr. Simon Sandrisson steps into the diplomatic and scientific ring to try and wring every advantage he can for humanity. He has some advantages here, as one of the few people who can say they invented FTL on their own from first principles, he has a lot of fans. Especially among the multi-species Great Faction of the Analytic, a faction made of people who value knowledge, science, and pushing the boundaries of knowledge in an ethical fashion above everything else, the kind of faction your editor would likely fight people to join honestly (They sound like my kind of people, yeah.). He's also finding out that he's not without abilities of his own when it comes to the Arena, which may just be everyone's salvation.

This is a book that features political and diplomatic maneuvering, voyages into the unknown, and battles great and small on the ground and in the air. It's a space opera featuring characters that are well-written but larger than life operating in a setting that is wild and crazy beyond belief, and incredibly enthralling. What's interesting is the lengths that Mr. Spoor has gone to avoid making this a black and white setting. Even the Molothos, who would be easy to just make into a vile pile of monsters, are given some nuance. They treat each other with empathy and compassion showing that they aren't inherently monsters. Instead in some ways, they are victims of a culture that trains them to believe that everyone who isn't a Molothos is a monstrous barely rational thing that cannot be trusted and must be collared and yoked for the safety of the only truly civilized species in the universe (Sound like Nazis…All the Untermenschen are simultaneously subsapient pathetic, but also terrifying.). Unlike some books that make their villainous aliens evil on an almost genetic level, I find myself believing that the Molothos could coexist with the rest of us as equals and friends if they could only shake off their toxic and vile beliefs. This is done by making the Molothos' viewpoint characters for a good part of the book, so we are forced to see things from their point of view. So we see them act with compassion and friendship towards each other. That makes it harder for the reader to simply dismiss them as a race of monsters and you're left asking if our history or hell our current day makes a wrong turn, could we turn out that way? (The answer is yes. It’s happened before and arguably it is in the process of happening again.) I mean let's be honest, what the Molothos do to other species we've already done to each other, whatever humans do to each other, they can certainly do to alien beings. There's also the example of the Hyperions in the book themselves as an example of how callous humanity can be for the pettiest reasons (Nerds, the Comic Shop Guy in the Simpsons is not a role model!). Say what you will about the Molothos, they didn't imprison thousands of people in a lie for the entertainment of a few dozen people. It's that kind of writing that elevates the Arenaverse from just being pulp space opera to a series that should really get more attention and time I think. Challenges of the Deep by Ryk E Spoor gets an A. I hope he returns to this universe soon.

This book was voted for by our ever wise patrons. If you would like a vote on upcoming books and theme months join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you get a vote for as little as 1$ a month. Next week join us for the 3rd book of The Expanse, Abaddon's Gate. Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading!

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2017/06/grand-central-area-by-rye-e-spoor.html

Revenant Gun By Yoon Ha Lee

Revenant Gun

By Yoon Ha Lee

This is the third book by Mr. Lee to appear in this review series and the last book in his series Machineries of Empire. I won't retread too much ground here but Mr. Lee is a Korean American born in Texas, who spent much of his life moving between the Republic of Korea and the United States. He also has a degree in secondary math education from Stanford, so maybe it's no surprise that in his science fiction universe math can change the very laws of the universe. Revenant Gun was published in 2018 by Solaris, see the review on Raven Stratagem for more details. Before we start a quick refresher since it's been about seven months since we reviewed book two. Also a quick warning, there will be spoilers for the first two books. You've been warned. This book takes place in the universe of the Hexarchate, a vast interstellar nation ruled by six factions (Which if I recall, used to be seven, which would have made it a Heptarchate.). These factions are held up by the use of technology that operates in defiance of standard physical laws, referred to as exotic technologies. These exotic technologies covered things like faster than light flight, abilities to control human behavior, and granting superhuman abilities to people. Exotic technologies are made possible by everyone in an interstellar volume observing the same calendar, with the same time measurements and the same rituals, in the same language as dictated by very dense mathematical calculations. Oh, and the slow, public torturing to death for heresy of anyone who deviates even slightly from the orthodox calendar (You have been accused of forgetting that it is Tuesday and instead thinking it is Wednesday, the court finds you guilty and sentences you to be… flayed alive. {Not far wrong, in book two, a group of historical reenactors were tortured to death for being to accurate}). As you can imagine the Hexarchate government wasn't very democratic and wasn't very popular, giving it a staggeringly immense amount of heretics to use as human firewood to keep the fires of the calendar industry burning! However, it turns out being unpopular torturous tyrants will backfire on a long enough timeline and any backfire can be lethal when your government is unable to depend on torturing people to death.

The first two books are the story of two people who were betrayed by the Hexarchate but survived long enough to avenge themselves utterly. Those two being the undead general Jedao and the infantry captain Cheris. While Jedao sacrificed himself in the first book, Cheris was left with enough of his memories and reflexes burned into her mind and body to carry on the mission. Which she did, hijacking an entire fleet to fend off an invasion while positioning everything for a single powerful strike at the very foundation of the Hexarchate: it's calendar. Because Cheris single-handedly built a new calendar that would allow for the exotic technologies to work but with two changes that would tear everything down. First of all, the exotic effects became voluntary, this is huge because the Hexarchate military was built on an exotic technology called formation instinct which made disobedience nearly impossible. Second of all, no torture is needed to maintain it. Cheris also made sure it was big and widely publicized enough that no one could ignore it. Did I mention by the way that the torture cops who enforce the calendar are mostly using exotic technologies to force the population to comply? Kinda hard to do when everyone can just quietly opt-out isn't it (Heretic Lives Matter, motherfuckers!)?

As you can imagine the revelation shatters the Hexarchate into pieces but two successor states have risen from the ashes and pushed back foreign invaders and are dueling for final supremacy. The Compact is a democratic state using Cheris's calendar. The Protectorate is a military dictatorship using the old calendar (The Protectorate… talk about bootlickers who are ideologically committed to the need to keep torturing people to death). Meanwhile, Cheris has disappeared completely on her own mission and no one can find her. Both of them, however, are going to have to bury the hatchet real quick because there's a bigger threat gathering it's strength and no one wants to see it succeed. The Hexarchate was ruled by six factions, each focused on providing a single element of government service, each of these factions was ruled by a Hexarch. One of these factions was the Nirai, which basically conducted the science and technical work of the Hexarchate. They had a Hexarch who was killed but that Hexarch was only the frontman for the Hexarch Kujen, the genius who created the original calendar because it would empower the Hexarch military and give him a sort of immortality. Kujen has been alive for almost a thousand years at this point and spent that entire time pushing the exotic technologies as far as he could and keeping the really good bits for himself (Selfish dick). As far as he is concerned Cheris' new calendar is a direct attack on his life and he isn't going down without a fight (I’ve never understood this. Look, the prospect of oblivion hits a big outside context problem in my mind, as much as the next man. So I get the desire for immortality. However, you’d think at some point that at some point you’d have enough and just be ready to go. You just get bored at some point, if nothing else. All your friends are dead, you’ve outlived everyone you’ve ever loved and have probably at that point started keeping everyone at arms reach to avoid being hurt for the nth time. Why stick around?). So he has a hijacked fleet, full of hijacked Kel who cannot deny him and armed with technologies he has developed and held back specifically to destroy Hexarchate forces. There's a final weapon on top of all of this, Kujen has his own Jedao, the undefeated general that terrifies every man, woman, and child in the Hexarchate to lead this stolen fleet. A Jedao that Kujen has modified with abilities and talents that will make him better able to serve Kujen.

This Jedao, however, is a much younger man, not having any memories of his military career but Kujen is betting on a combination of his native talent and reputation to carry the day for him. This actually has some decent odds of working but only if Jedao is committed to the cause, which given Kujen’s disregard for all the short-lived creatures around him may be hard to gain (Protip: if you want someone’s loyalty, it helps if you are not a raging asshole in their general direction and can maybe at least pretend to have something for them to buy in to. Something other than “I need you to be absolutely committed to a system of torture that only needs to exist so I personally can be immortal”{I have to wonder if Kujen has lived so long and been so removed from other people that he simply cannot empathize with them any more.}). On top of this Cheris may have disappeared but her commitment to making sure that the torturing and abuse of the Hexarcate ends hasn't gone away. She is out there somewhere, stalking the void, hunting down the one threat to her new calendar and she's gained an unexpected ally to her cause. One with the information that might actually let her kill Kujen. She has the memories of an older, better trained, and more experienced Jedao and may know her opponent better than he knows himself. Meanwhile, Kujen's Jedao has no idea about Cheris' basic nature or capabilities because if he learns too much, he may defect (Yes! Withhold information about your enemy from your general! Sun Tzu predicts that doing so will go so very well for you!). As this younger Jedao struggles to make sense of this frightening new world, he needs to decide whose side he's on and why. He also needs to know why this world seems more afraid of him than he is of it and do so with a shrinking array of tools and resources. During all of this, Kujan seems ready to force his calendar back on everyone, and if he must do so on top of a whole mountain range of bodies then so much the better. The stage is set for a bitter conflict against enemies both within and without but it all might come down to Jedao deciding just who his enemies are.

This story is primarily told through the viewpoint of the younger Jedao as he wakes up in a confusing future surrounded by people who think they know him. He has to get up to speed fast while unraveling the mystery of just what he is as well as who. This leaves him feeling isolated and alienated from everyone. On top of that, he can't simply sit down and ask people to explain anything because he can't trust any of the Kel to tell him the truth. Which in theory should make it easier for Kujen to simply seduce him (Not really? If you can’t trust the underlings to tell you the truth, it’s gonna be really hard to believe that the Big Cheese will do so. There are ways to do it, but Kujen doesn’t seem to have the ability to even conceive of using those strategies anymore.). Unfortunately, Kujen doesn't seem to be willing to restrain his darker habits long enough to seal the deal. Or perhaps after being alive so long he's no longer capable of understanding that he needs to. While Kujen is never a viewpoint character, we do get information about his backstory. It's enough that we start to vaguely understand how someone who once tried to keep a small girl from starving to death by sharing out his own meager rations could turn into the kind of man who creates a system that will torture hundreds of thousands if not millions to death in a single day just to prolong his own life (I mean, Trotsky started off as a decent person too, but then he ended up… Doing Things™ in Western Russia/Poland that don’t exactly comport with the concept of human rights. Same with Lenin.). I can't say that I sympathize with Kujen though, but he does seem to embody the idea that any system can start out with the best of intentions but end up worse than what it replaced. Especially when it prioritizes power over the wellbeing of its citizens and refuses all compromises. I say system because in a real way Kujen was the living embodiment of the old Hexarchate system and like President Kennedy predicted his making peaceful reform impossible made violent revolution inevitable (I feel like this describes Right Now. I mean, I’d MUCH prefer a peaceful “revolution” in the sense of a political sea change over “1917” but there is gonna come to a point where “1917” is inevitable unless it becomes structurally possible to change the system peacefully.). Something I think everyone should remember, even the powerful aren't untouchable and all the wealth and power in the world only provides the illusion of being above consequences. On a long enough timeline, everyone pays for their actions (Eh. Not really. I mean, sure, if you believe in an afterlife that distributes justice sure, but strictly in terms of the material, the world is not just. Not as it is.{Gonna side with the the Rev. King, the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards moral justice.}).

That said, Mr. Lee doesn't abandon the characters who got us here entirely. Our long-suffering crashhawk (A Kel who lacks formation instinct) Brezan is back, as the highest general in the Compact having to settle matters with the Protectorate while protecting the new calendar. Of course, he is still dealing with the fall out of his decision to defect to Cheris' plan from the last book, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Brezan's role in this book is entirely political (The poor benighted soul) as he has to try to get everyone on the same page. Cheris herself is also present in the book although in a much-diminished role as the spotlight is thrown completely on the younger Jedao. Here Cheris is really just finishing up the last loose ends of her mission. Ironically I do have to just mention that if the Hexarchate hadn't betrayed her in the first book and tried to kill her, Kujen wouldn't be in this situation in the first place and the younger Jedao wouldn't exist. So Kujen was in a way the architect of the Hexarchate's fall as much as he was the architect of its rise. There are also new characters but I won't ruin the surprise so I'll let you meet them yourself when you read this book

Mr. Lee wraps up his trilogy with a well-written ending that brings a number of his characters full circle while letting us consider how others wrote their own fates. He does so by giving us an epic story but focusing on the small and personal parts that drive it forward because this story isn't decided by the clashes of millions but by the choices and decisions of individuals who find themselves in the right place at the right time. While mostly focusing on the internal struggle of a couple of characters it does provide us plenty of action and intrigue to go along with it so I doubt anyone will find the book boring. Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee gets an A.

So this month every book we reviewed was voted for by our ever wise patrons. If you would like a say in what books get reviewed, what themes we chose to pursue and other topics, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you get a vote for as low as a 1$ a month. Next week we continue with Challenges of the Deeps by Ryk E Spoor. Until then, stay safe and keep reading!

Red Text was your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black Text your editor Garvin Anders 

You can read the last two reviews in this series at the links below!

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2019/09/raven-stratagem-by-yoon-ha-lee.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2019/05/ninefox-gambit-by-yoon-ha-lee.html

Religion discussion from Fight the Good Fight

We cut this from the review for reasons of length, now normally only 3 dollar patrons or above would see the debate but given the lockdown, we've decided to share for the months of April and May. Red text is, of course, your editor and black text your reviewer. I hope you enjoy.

There are Christian communists and socialists. A hell of a lot of Jewish communists. Muslim communists. Not even the USSR banned religion, Cuba hasn’t, Vietnam hasn’t. The closest you get is the PRC and even it doesn’t ban religion, just restrict what particular beliefs are permitted, and of all the communist governments that have ever existed, they are actually the worst at instituting a socialist program with the possible exception of whatever Juche Madness is occurring in North Korea. Again, straight-up Cold War propaganda communism. If you want communist villains, fine I can handle that, but have it be the result of Democratic Centralism in a Marxist-Leninist state leading to a consolidation of power in the hands of a monster. Like what happened under Stalin. That would at least be reasonable.
While the USSR never banned religion, it did make the elimination of religious belief an open policy of the government. Additionally, through many periods of Soviet rule being known as a believer would be enough to ban you from holding positions as a teacher, military officer or various state positions. Which given how all power was centralized in the State, meant that you were a 2nd class citizen. Additionally, public religious behavior was at times harshly cracked down on. I should note that the USSR did liberalize in some respects in the 1960s, although openly religious people would be blocked from certain professions and ranks. In the People’s Republic of China, you are free to believe in any religion that is approved by the state, as long as you do it through the officially sanctioned variant heavily controlled by the government. Dare to pray or believe in a religion not found serving the state’s interest and you will suffer harassment and persecution. The People’s Republic of Vietnam is more liberal in this regard but still declares that the state has the right to suspend or even ban beliefs that undermine the party’s hold on power. Cuba used to exclude any religious believer from party membership and therefore from government positions but has liberalized since the fall of the USSR. In short, I would not regard a communist government with anything else but suspicion when it came to my religious rights. Much like how I suppose a number of minorities would not regard a right-wing government with anything but suspicion in regard to their civil rights.

All of this is true. In your kind of bog-standard unelaborated Marxism, institutional religion is the Opiate of the Masses, a thing that contributes to reactionary attitudes and keeps the working class unaware of their own oppression. However, it isn’t a thing to be forcefully removed, but rather a thing that will go away in the fullness of time. However, let’s just say that conditions on the ground and international diplomacy/espionage/political siege by NATO could also get involved and make things… more complicated/worse. And there are founder-effects too, so the ideology and practice of the USSR influenced other communist states. Sometimes forcefully in the case of the Warsaw Pact. And, without going into a list of terrible crimes, it isn’t like the western powers were as pure as the driven snow on human rights. Far from it. The Cold War turned everyone into dicks.
I'll certainly agree that the western powers have their own lists of sins but that's a topic for another review. That said my view on why the communist powers treated religion as they did is simple. I don't believe they could tolerate any center of power, no matter how weak that power, being outside of the state. Additionally, religion created an identity not dependent on communist ideology and might allow their citizens to develop common ground with capitalists. This was not to be allowed. Communism or socialism, whatever name you give it, as practiced in the USSR and PRC rested on the idea of nearly all power resting in the hands of the state.

And I don’t think it is that simple. There was some of that, sure, particularly in the PRC; but I can’t speak as well to history and such with them. If the Soviets were concerned with a power structure outside the state, they would have done what the PRC did and drag everyone inside the tent pissing out like they did with all the other post-revolution socialist parties - which is why you are more-right with the PRC. Instead, they excluded members of religious organizations - remember, lone-wolf Christians aren’t really a common thing in this place and time - from certain positions of public trust and party membership, which under the Vanguard Party theory of Lenin basically means “A dyed-in-the-wool Marxist-Leninist who is in the government or senior civil service”. This looks like an internal-security measure to me, with an ideological element in the sense that you cannot be a Hardcore ML-like that while also being religious. That doesn’t make it right, clearly. And I obviously disagree with Lenin on a lot of things, not the least of which are Democratic Centralism and his stance on religion, even though I am myself an atheist. However, it does history and bluntly humanity a disservice to reduce it to “Commies Hate God and Christians” or “The USSR was simply power-mad and not responding even quasi-rationally to real conditions.”
I got to point out that neither of those are my position, however. My position is that the USSR was openly stating that they intended to destroy religious belief and forced the populace to choose between being seen as a real member of the Soviet Union or being a second class citizen who was clearly viewed as suspect. In the early phases of the USSR, they most certainly did attack organized religion and worked to destroy the idea of religious identity. The fact that they failed doesn’t change the attempt. Even during the more tolerant phases, it was clear that the Soviet government didn’t like the idea of large groups of believers of any religion being present. This eroded somewhat, as the Soviet Union became more of an Imperial Russian project but never really went away. I also pointed out in my first post that the communist powers differed greatly in their approaches to religion. For example, Vietnam, whose communist government is as much based on Vietnamese Nationalism and resistance to outside control, to the point of fighting a war with the PRC is fairly liberal towards religion, as long as it doesn’t threaten their control of Vietnam. That said, given how every communist government has insisted on at the very least being in full control of any organized religion or religious expression, viewing them as suspect is only reasonable if you are religious.

The suspectness isn’t entirely unreasonable, and all of the Cold-War era communist states that weren’t overthrown in military coups were offshoots of Marxist-Leninism, so the argument can coherently be made that the hostility toward religion is an artifact of that particular ideology, combined with conditions under which those states “grew up” so to speak. Had the leftcoms won in Germany in 1919, for instance, I don’t think we would have seen that same hostility.
I’ll grant the possibility but that’s not what happened for better or for worse and most folks are going to think of a single-party authoritarian state as the default model for a communist state. Because that’s what we’ve seen in our history. Now if you wanted to write stories of a multi-party democratic communist state, go right ahead, in fact, it’s not a bad idea to explore such ideas through science fiction. It’s also not what we’re dealing with in this story, we’re dealing with an authoritarian single-party state, not anything out of Rosa’s book.

Oh don’t worry on that score. I am, though there is a bit of a hiatus going due to writer’s block. Anyway, to sum up, Mr. Gibbs really needs to flesh out his villains. If he wants God-Hating Commies, he needs to actually develop them so we know or can infer what’s going on that grounds their apparent hyperpersecution of all religions in something ideological or political that makes sense. Frigid and I can disagree on the why, the point is, there is a why.
I’ll definitely agree that Mr. Gibbs would be better served to flesh out his villains a bit more. That said, this is the first book of the series so I wouldn’t judge him too harshly as there was a lot of ground to cover. My own thought is that if you’re going to institute a single party world government at the point of a gun, destroying competing sources of common identity and loyalty would make sense but would be a dangerous course of action. It would be interesting if this was just part of a raft of laws they pushed through like banning everything outside of a single language (bonus points if it’s a manufactured language), holidays, ethnic histories, etc. That said, the communist states have a history of persecution of religious groups so I'm not going to protest the idea of a ruthless authoritarian state being savagely opposed to any sort of religious faith. Although as always I would judge the execution of such an idea.

Echoes of War: Fight the Good Fight By Daniel Gibbs

Echoes of War: Fight the Good Fight

By Daniel Gibbs

Before we begin a pair of quick notes. First, as many of you likely noticed, we haven't been redacting the editor's content throughout April, as part of our effort to help you fight the boredom of lockdown, we're gonna keep doing this through May (Happy May Day! Insert Communist Recruitment Slogans Here.{I would like to for the record that the editor's comments are his own and do not reflect my views or the views of the review.}). Afterward, however, we will be moving a lot of the side commentary back behind the 3$ month limit on our patron site. Remember folks, stay safe, wash your damn paws (Papa Nurgle is not your friend.). Second, I should note that while this was voted for by our patrons, a friend of mine has worked with Mr. Gibbs on another novel, which I'll likely be reviewing later this summer (I also work with that author on some of his other projects.). While everything in this review is my honest opinion, I feel its best to be upfront about that.

Now Mr. Gibbs is an American born author, who worked with the US Navy and US Marines as an IT engineer, in his own words designing and building computer systems, for many years, an experience that informs his writing. Also informing his writing is the fact that his father served for 30 years with the US Navy, joining up in 1945 and after the end of his service working as a civilian contractor in ship repair for a couple more decades. Which is also something you can see the influence of in this work. Other influences that have been mentioned are the Muntineer's Moon series by David Weber and Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson. Fight the Good Fight is his first novel, published in 2019 through Amazon, although in some interviews Mr. Gibbs has stated that he has been working on this universe for around 20 years. Let's dive right in shall we.

The Terran Coalition is a nation founded by refugees. They fled centuries ago from a victorious movement called the World Society that was determined to unify Earth under a single communist government, (That isn’t how communism works. This is straight-up communism as presented by Cold War Propaganda. The whole point of the Internationale is that we should have self-determination. Yes, the revolution needs to be international, and the different socialist countries need to show some level of solidarity with each other; but once it’s world-wide, you should be doing away with governments as we understand them. And then there is that name. This dude is actually agreeing with Margaret Thatcher, likening the idea that we live in an interdependent society where we have responsibilities to each other as being tyrannical cartoon communism) that argued to achieve socialism that certain political and personal freedoms had to be given up. Among those freedoms, religious belief of any kind.  Resistance was futile but luck, or perhaps divine provenance was with the dissenters, as through a work of genius they were able to crack the light-speed limit and flee beyond the solar system. They settle the world of Canaan (Really? The Land of Milk and Honey to which Moses led the Israelites? Did they wander the void for forty years too? {That could be a pretty interesting story, I know Battlestar Galatic was trying for something like that but it never really worked for me}) and others, thinking they were beyond the reach of the rest of humanity. The worlds of the Terran Coalition aren't paradises but many of the issues that plague modern humanity seem to be gone, as Christians, Jews, and Muslims live and work together without any violence, discrimination, or even social tension. Additionally, the Coalition seems fairly free of sexism or racism. For the most part, the Terran Coalition seems to be an idealized version of Space America and friends (Marx’s Beard. It’s like he just couldn’t get over the end of the Cold War and had to get his over the top American propaganda fix. Look, I do write propaganda; but when I write propaganda, I tell you that it’s propaganda, I don’t hide it in thinly veiled allegories while taking potshots at the British Labour Party. I don’t even bowdlerize the USSR or lie about capitalist ideology and its consequences.). Those friends being chiefly a new British Commonwealth (Did they evacuate the Queen?) that is also a member state in the Coalition as well as a New Israel and a Saudi Arabia. I'll admit to some confusion here because there's no sign of a monarchy there, which means a Muslim Arab state would more likely be named Arabia or something like that. As the Saudi part of Saudi literally refers to the royal house (It just means the author is ignorant of political geography. How American of him. Sorry Frigid, but you know damned well that many Americans can’t find Saudi Arabia on a map, let alone know that it’s named for the royal house. {I suppose the royal house could have been evaced but... why?}). The name of the country basically translates to the piece of Arabia that House Saud owns for crying out loud! While the peoples of the Coalition hold to their faiths, they seemed to have abandoned the more hateful elements, perhaps because some of the more troublesome believers were simply left behind to distract the socialist as I can't imagine members of the Taliban or the Westboro Baptist Church sharing space with each other on a starship (No, though it would make for a hilarious and short-lived reality show.). While it wasn't always easy, as there is at least one war mentioned with alien powers, the Terran Coalition seemed to be moving forward. But everything changed when the League of Sol attacked (Boooo!).

The Solarian League is the creation of the people that the ancestors of the Coalition were fleeing from in the first place and they do not seem to have reconciled with the idea of fellow human beings living outside the League's authority. The first attack occurred shortly before our main character's David Cohen's 9th birthday. David's father Levi was an officer in the Terran Coalition Navy, he fought and died becoming one of the Coalition's first heroes in a long war, a decade's long war. David, however, doesn't especially want to follow in his Father's footsteps. While he’s been drafted to fight against the League's aggression, what he really wants is to complete his service and turn to study to become a Rabbi. Sadly for David, he has a talent not just for fighting but for command. If the Coalition was going to survive, David had to set aside his dream and use those talents to their full potential. Because the entire war has been fought on Coalition territory and while the Coalition has kept their heartland mostly free of warfare the fact is that their resource base is constantly being worn away. Additionally, while the Coalition maintains a technological edge, the League has numbers, an untouched resource base, and the willingness to fight for decades more while the will of the Coalition's people is starting to crack under the strain. However, when the League makes a surprise offer of peace, David is tapped to lead his new ship as the escort to the delegation. He has to discover if the peace is genuine or if this is a trap. Can he be objective, however, when working for peace means sitting down across from the man who killed his Father?

Most of the book is told from David's viewpoint and it's David's internal conflict that provides the center of the narrative here. David, being an Orthodox Jew, wrestles with a great many questions, such as how he can square his duty to kill people by the thousands with the commandments he is supposed to live by (It’s really easy under Judaism. The first and most important unwritten commandment - unwritten in the Tanakh anyway, it shows up in the piles and piles of rabbinical commentary - is Live. If that means killing someone who is trying to kill or enslave you, that’s what it means. If it means eating pork because you’re starving or the Goyim will kill you if you don’t, you eat the fucking pork. The 613 laws he lives by are not a suicide pact with G-d. I get how this could be a reaction to trauma, but religiously… it’s not actually a big deal. Now, if this is a response to war-guilt that he’s put into religious terms, I could see that.). How does he make peace with himself having made decisions that have gotten people following his leadership killed? The most important question, of course, is one that every one of faith has to wrestle with at least once in their life, why? Just, why would a just and merciful God allow half the crap that gets done? That's a hard question to answer even when a giant fleet of invaders isn't burning cities down around your ears. Mr. Gibbs does a great job showing this internal conflict and how David tries to find a way to if not answer his questions, at least come to a conclusion that will let him sleep at night. You won't find any novel answers or deep philosophical answers here but not everyone is going to provide a novel or deeply philosophical answer. David's answers are true to his character and honestly, that's good enough for me. Nor is David the only conflicted character in this story, almost every supporting character displays an understandable and believable motivation. The interaction between characters is another place that Mr. Gibbs shines fairly well. In a lot of mediocre military fiction, you get characters who are 100% about the military and unable to have interactions outside that context. In this story, we get people who have interests and hobbies and can have normal conversations about things other than the military and the war (Well, the dude is the son of a veteran and former contractor. Presumably, his dad had conversations in his life… Most people who write terrible military sci-fi like that aren’t veterans or at least veteran-adjacent, I’ve noticed.). Despite having fought this war pretty much their entire lives. For example a discussion between two Jewish members of the fleet over whether or not Christ could be the Messiah. The discussion is emotional but it's also handled believably. The story also avoids having the Coalition military just be the US military in space, for example, the Coalition Navy uses army ranks, with colonel's commanding ships instead of captains. Which is at least an interesting change. I also like how the meeting between the League and the Coalition was handled, when the seemingly required dinner scene came up I honestly braced myself expecting something like the one in The Myriad. Instead, I got a scene of two groups of people who clearly don't like each other, have good reasons for not liking each other, but are determined to act like professional adults and not embarrass themselves. Don't get me wrong, the dinner is awkward as hell but it's intentionally and believably so! I mean a dinner where you have to be polite to a man who killed members of your family is gonna be awkward at best! The fact that instead of overwrought posturing from the League delegation or self-righteous ranting from the Coalition we get tense, restrained discussion with both sides pulling back from full out fencing is a great example of how to write such scenes. It reinforces that everyone here is an adult professional determined to do a distasteful but necessary job.

However, that leads me back to the most obvious problem in the novel. The setting is honestly lackluster and kind of black and white. The League comes off as a flat cardboard stand-in for an enemy and the twist of the novel isn't really a surprise. Honestly, you could replace the League with Nazis, or Feudalists, or some alien empire; it wouldn't change much (Ideology Matters. When the Indiana Jones films had the Nazis looking for occult artifacts - even though most of the Nazis were just mooks in pulp fiction - it felt real. It felt real because that was something the Nazis actually did. Himmler was a complete crank even by the incoherent standards of Nazism, and had Nazi anthropologists combing the world for things like the Holy Grail, and Thor’s Hammer. When Dr. Jones goes to Berlin, to the book burning, that is a thing the Nazis did. They were Nazis, doing actual Nazi Things, and their ideology was portrayed correctly. Contrast this with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. They couldn’t do the whole religious artifact thing with the USSR, because the Communist Party didn’t believe in any of it. So they had to go with space-aliens which the USSR absolutely hoped were real. Now, they flubbed it a bit in the execution. The writers decided to have the USSR going after crazy psychic powers for mind control. The Americans laugh it off as cranky, but the Army and CIA were experimenting with them up until 1995. To be clear, both sides tried to use psychic powers. The Soviets were more interested in telepathic communication for agents and submarines, and with precognition to avoid danger in space. The US actually preferred mind-control and remote viewing for spying purposes. This difference, in reality, is driven by the ideology and strategic doctrines of both powers; and the writers flubbed it - in addition to their other failures-in-execution - to make the USSR more evil. This book doesn’t even try as hard as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is what happens when your villains are just boogeymen and you haven’t bothered to study the ideology you’re describing as evil. Your villains end up being cardboard cutouts with no depth, and that doesn’t make for a compelling conflict, even if you don’t have a political ax to grind, which is always false, because there is no such thing as non-political art. You’re always trying to get your audience to feel or think something, and that is by its very nature a political act.). Admiral Seville, for example, is honestly kind of predictable and nowhere near as compelling as David. It also doesn't help that it doesn't feel like anyone in the League really believes in what they're doing, except for the one diplomat who's here to bring peace because he's lost both his sons in the war. Part of this is I think a lack of space given over to the villains, not that I blame Mr. Gibbs as that space was honestly better used looking at David's internal conflicts and motivations. The politics also aren't especially well done in this book either (I mean…). Mr. Gibbs avoids turning anyone into a ridiculous parody but it's very clear where his sympathies lie (I would argue that he’s not actually interested in exploring his villains or psychologically can’t.). So Coalition politics feels like he transported his idea of modern American politics onto a space-faring nation in a completely different situation and context. For that matter, the Coalition doesn't feel like a nation engaged in a total war for its very survival. For example, privately owned defense companies are often engaged in padding their bills or so the officers believe. This leaves me wondering why the Coalition isn't at least using a lot of the measures enacted in the UK or US in WWII. I don't expect them to copy the USSR but honestly, if we were fighting a foreign power that had invaded Hawaii and Alaska, managed to bomb the East Coast and pushed us on the defense for decades... I would expect our economy and political setups to be radically different (Capitalism is very good at making consumer goods in relative peacetime, but when you’re in a survival situation, it tends to either break down or become a profiteering nightmare. We’re seeing that right now, by the way. This is why capitalist democracies tend to switch over to privately-owned command economies very rapidly in total war scenarios. Seriously, the economies of the USSR and the USA were not that functionally different in WWII. The difference was in who owned the factories. The level of state control was almost the same.). This just maybe because we don't spend a lot of time around civilians in the book however so I could be completely mistaken.

If I had to sum it up though, I would say the Fight the Good Fight is a good story with great characters trapped in a very so-so setting, with fairly sub-par villains. That said, it's possible that the setting gets a lot better down the line in other books in the series and the characters are strong enough that I'm willing to give the series enough time to convince me that my first impression of the setting is wrong. The Action is also fairly well done, but I will state that I think the boarding actions are more interesting than a lot of the ship to ship combat in the book. Except for the sections where Mr. Gibbs focuses on damage control, which he does a great job at. I would say if you're interested in military science fiction that explores a very nonstandard character for the genre you should give this a spin. I'm giving Fight the Good Fight by Daniel Gibbs a B-. There are a lot of good scenes and strong character development here but it's held back by the setting, and the villains really need some development as well.

This book, as I mentioned was selected by our patrons. If you're interested in voting for reviews or themes consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads and thank you for your support. Quick note, we had to split off a discussion of religion and religious freedom in the communist states since it was verging on length equivalent to the review. We will post it separately tomorrow. Next week is Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee, where we complete another series! Until then stay safe, stay frosty and Keep Reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your editor Garvin Anders