Breach of Peace By Daniel Gibbs and Gary T Stevens

Breach of Peace

By Daniel Gibbs and Gary T Stevens

Before we begin, I have to give one of our dreaded disclaimers. Both the editor and I know Mr. Stevens and have known him for years. That said I've never met the man face to face, as our friendship has solely been carried out online. I've been reading his work and giving him praise and grief over it for years now and in some ways commenting on his work prepared me for this review series. He has also been supportive of the reviews, becoming one of our ever-wise Patrons. In fact, Mr. Stevens sent me this book and was the man who told me about Mr. Gibbs' work in the first place. That said, everything you are about to read is my honest opinion but I feel giving you a review without mentioning my relationship would be dishonest. (I will second all of this, with the added caveat that I’ve been collaborating with him on Fanfiction for the past few years… Just to be clear as well, the co-authorship here is basically Gibbs for the world, while Mr. Stevens did all the actual writing.)

I discussed Mr. Gibbs' background in my review of Fight the Good Fight back in May, so I won't repeat myself. Mr. Stevens was born in DeLand Florida, his Mother a Licensed Practicing Nurse and his Father worked mostly as a Commercial Driver (May he rest in peace). He is currently a Professional Security Officer and an amateur historian. Before this book, his main writing experience was writing fiction on the internet, including a variety of fan fiction (Extremely complex multi-univese fanfiction). Which frankly I would defend as good practice for writing your own stories, especially since it exposes you to criticism both good and bad and you need to learn how to tell constructive criticism from just plain bad criticism. He has been working with Mr. Gibbs since 2001 on the Echoes of War universe with his own work within that setting Breach of Peace released in 2019, with additional books being released in 2019 as well.

To provide a brief recap of the premise behind the Echoes of War universe, a totalitarian communist government took over Earth at the close of the 21st century. As part of its program, it demanded that other forms of identity, such as religious belief be destroyed (although people were allowed to keep their languages, which strikes me as weird as language is a powerful means of maintaining a separate culture and identity [Problem is, it is very difficult to kill hundreds of languages. I’ll save my rant on how this is just Bad Communism™as well. I did that in the previous review. Suffice to say, good communists, are not class reductionists. {And yet it’s been done, the European powers did a pretty good of killing minority languages in their own states or crushing them to the point of extinction in the name of creating or preserving a common national identity, France for example. Frankly killing religious belief is just as hard or harder and the League isn’t hesitating to attack that.}] ). Those who would not surrender their beliefs or submit were able to flee as a fabled genius came up with a method of FTL that was cheap enough and easy enough to build that they could flee before being stopped. The single biggest group of people who fled founded the Terran Coalition. However, not everyone wanted to be a member of religious space America and friends (I know I wouldn’t be, as I would be forced to flee the Terrible At Being Communist State.). So some folks decided to peel away and make their own nations in space, with blackjack and hookers! Well, some of them, others decided to be boring and just make their own nations with others starting as members of the Coalition but deciding that it wasn't gonna work and just leaving. Thus were born various minor human powers and single planet nations or in some cases planets split between rival nations. In the centuries between this and the League of Sol showing up to attempt a surprise conquest of the Coalition, a certain amount of resentment was built up by the Coalition among the minor powers due to the Coalition's behavior or simple fact that it was the 500-pound gorilla in the room and they weren't (In fairness, America is kind of a dick. So Religious Space America isn’t gonna be different. {No one reaches hegemonic status without some level of dickery, I’m not saying that as an excuse but it’s a pretty ironclad law of international relations at this point}). Of course, everything changed when the League of Sol attacked. The minor powers declared neutrality, which was frankly short-sighted but realistic of them and it did kind of work out for them when the war dragged on for decades.

Our protagonist here is Captain James Henry of the independent trading ship, the Shadow Wolf. He’s a former Coalition Navy officer who was drummed out of the navy on trumped-up charges to cover for powerful interests. Captain Henry makes his living as an independent trader, owning his own ship, picking his own jobs and crew, answerable only to his clients and himself... And one bad job away from ruin. He's a drastically different character than David Cohen, as Captain Henry has no real faith or loyalty left to give and it's honestly understandable. Mr. Stevens does a good job of keeping Captain Henry from turning into some edgy parody however, as he is capable of having friendships and enjoying his life. That said Captain Henry is very leery of giving any faith or loyalty to groups or organizations having done that once already and been metaphorically burnt so spectacularly that he decided that fleeing his home nation to live among strangers was the best course of action. So Captain Henry is a man who is intent on being an honest businessman who looks out for his ship, his crew, his friends, clients, and himself, and some days he even manages to do it in that order. However, Captain Henry isn't the only colorful character in this crew, as he has collected a band of folks from across known space. This sometimes leads to some friction as these folks with very diverse backgrounds and political beliefs have to work and live together in tight spaces. I mean we have the ship's doctor Oskar, a man who fled not just the League of Sol but Earth itself, Tia Nguyen a former socialist revolutionary (aawww yeeaaah) from a planet dominated by mega-corporations, and Felix a hardcore libertarian from the Coalition just to start with. The crew is a great mix of people of different ethnic backgrounds, faiths, and political beliefs that get along by carefully not spending too much time discussing those politics. Of course, none of them are fans of the League, not even Tia, whose revolution was bankrolled, armed, and ultimately betrayed to the authorities by the League (Kinda like what the USSR did to the Anarchists in Republican Spain. Tia has an ideology similar to mine, in that she is leftcom or libertarian socialist, rather than an authoritarian communist.). Because the League didn't want an independent socialist power arising and providing an alternative to their brand of communist state. This is fairly common with powers trying to export an ideology honestly, they'll backstab someone without hesitation if it looks like you're creating an alternative implementation of those beliefs. (Oh, this isn’t even an alternative implementation. The ideological split was in the 1910s between Rosa Luxemburg and Friends, and Lenin and Friends {This must be how nonChristians feel when I try to explain the split between Charismatic Churches and Pentecostal ones and how that meshes with the rest of the Protestant churches…}) This is why you should be careful with foreign backers and remember they're never helping you out of the goodness of their hearts.

However, things aren't all careful coexistence and trading for profit in neutral space. The League has a presence here as it had to settle worlds to provide a launch point for their invasion. Unfortunately for the League their colonies are still raw and new and require a lot of outside support before they can become self-sufficient, never mind support a massive military campaign to conquer and occupy a large multi-planet power. So the League trades with the neutral powers and works to set up relationships with the neutrals that will either make them allies and eventual members of the League or at the very least dupes who won't help the Coalition (Which, let’s be fair, are eventually on the chopping block. Another thing to remember kids: neutrality favors the oppressor. Always.). One of those powers is the multicultural planet of Lusitania, which I really enjoy reading about. A world of Berbers, Portuguese, Basques, and others, it's a world that is growing in wealth and power from that trade but is also a troubled world with a fascist movement gaining popularity at the polls and brutalizing their opponents in the streets (Kill them. Death to all fascists.). This is also the world that Captain Henry finds himself doing a lot of business with, and increasingly finding it difficult to stay out of the local politics. On top of that, there are pirates, disasters, and all sorts of things going on in the deep void and it's getting worse as ships keep disappearing without a trace or explanation. Well, without a trace until the most recent disappearance when a surviving crew-member of the lost ship is found and Captain Henry is hired by three different groups to bring her back to Lusitania at all costs. None of them are people he can say no to and some of them make it very clear that saying no means many nasty consequences. Worse, he can’t give all 3 of them access to the survivor because at least 2 of them want exclusive access, including the one blackmailing him. Now you would think that would be the biggest problem in this story and in most of them, it would!

However, that survivor, Miri Gaon has secrets of her own. I mean after all what kind of woman puts on a spacesuit with extra oxygen and throws herself out of an airlock to escape captivity? With her past coming back to haunt her with a vengeance and a secret plot that could endanger all of neutral space bubbling into fruition no price is too high for Miri's many enemies to silence her and if possible drag her back in chains. If that wasn't enough her own employers are asking themselves the obvious question of ‘hey wait, what kind of manic does throw herself out of an airlock in an unsettled system?’ For that matter, her original rescuers are also asking the same question and it's a fair question, isn't it? I mean, why would you risk death from asphyxiation, alone in the void uncountable miles away from any hope of rescue? The answer to that question is what makes the Shadow Wolf and everyone on board of it a target for enemies with resources and numbers beyond their ability to match. As those forces are mobilized and brought to bear, Captain Henry is going to have to figure out how to do the job, protect his ship, crew, and friends and do it without selling his soul. So Captain Henry is going to have to use every ounce of cunning, luck, and hidden advantages that he has just to get to Lusitania.

I honestly enjoyed reading this story, the characters are all pretty distinct and show Mr. Steven's ability to write a variety of people and viewpoints without reducing anyone to a cardboard cutout. This book takes place at the same time as Fight the Good Fight, so I feel that you can jump right in here without any prior knowledge. Also by staying free of the main war, Mr. Stevens can give us a more gray playground with a lot of competing but legitimate interests, while also providing us undeniable and unmistakable villains. We also see Mr. Stevens put in a lot of work to humanize the League of Sol and add some depth and nuance to them here. Although that's honestly a bit of a struggle since that was the biggest weak point in Mr. Gibbs' work but Mr. Stevens does it by spending time with enough members of the League to humanize them a bit. I have to admit I kind of regret the space he had to spend to do it however since it came at the cost of space that could have been devoted to other more interesting characters. Meanwhile, he also steps back from the main conflict to show that other nations and peoples of the universe may have grudges, interests, and concerns of their own influencing their calculations. That he does this while giving us a well-paced action story with good characters with believable motivations and entertaining twists and turns is something he should be proud of. For example, I like how Mr. Stevens writes one of the villains of this piece, the Lusitanian fascist Caetano, who is clearly a dangerous woman but one capable of self-control and a certain graciousness that keeps people from realizing just what kind of shark they have in their kiddie pool. That said there are some issues here. There are several characters on the crew that just kind of fade into the background because there isn't really enough space to expand their characterization. There's also a bit of dancing around just what happened to Captain Henry which really doesn't do much for the main plot. The shape of it is pretty easy to see, so why bother hiding the details? The biggest thing here for me though is ending the story on a cliff hanger and right when the ship gets to Lusitania, so I kinda feel like we're only looking at half the story (It literally is. Mr. Stevens was forced by his editor to cut the book in half and publish the second half separately. Otherwise this would have been one book.). That is going to knock down Breach of Peace by Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens to a B but a solid one. That said if you're looking for a tale that would remind you of science fiction like say... Firefly, this is a good place to look.

So next week, our editor will be taking a hopefully relaxing and enjoyable vacation which he has earned after long hazardous negotiations in the index pits. I hope you will all join me in wishing him a good time. Meanwhile, we will be joined by a guest editor who will be aiding me in the review of the novel selected by our ever wise patrons. If you would like a voice in selecting future reviews, getting announcements ahead of time, discussing and voting on theme months then you should join us at Frigid Reads is creating book reviews, book discussion | Patreon where a vote on all of these matters is available at 1$ a month. Next week, Priest by Matthew Colville! Until then be safe and keep reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders