In the Court of the Crimson Kings By SM Stirling

In the Court of the Crimson Kings

By SM Stirling

“Tollamune! Tollamune! Tollamune!” a voice cried “The King Beneath the Mountain comes! Let all align their behavior with his will! Let none harbor thoughts of disloyalty to the Crimson King! Sh'u Maz! He who maintains the harmony of the Real World comes! Show Deference!” page 330

Welcome back, readers! I hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy New Year. Now I would say something about how I hope this year will go but after the last two years, I'm keeping my trap shut. That said, thank you for returning and if this is your first review, welcome and I hope you enjoy it! (Attention Bajoran Workers Hello dear readers.  I’m your resident tyrannical authoritarian gay communist editor.  I too will not tempt fate by speaking of the new year, but hope that you are all well, in this instant, while you read.)

In the Court of the Crimson Kings is the sequel to the novel The Sky People, which we reviewed in December. To recap the setting, the novels are both alternative history and planetary romance (I discussed both genres in the last review so I encourage you to go take a look). In this setting, the point of divergence from our timeline is that a very advanced alien species showed up to our solar system and decided to turn Venus and Mars into life-bearing worlds. Not only did they terraform the two worlds but they directly seeded both planets with life from Earth. This included human beings, or to be more specific for my biologist editor and other readers, anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens human beings. With at least one group having been taken so recently that their language could be traced to the Indo-European language family.

These revelations have given a new life to the space program, which had faced serious questioning in the 1980s, the time of the last novel. Because it was very obvious that Venus and Mars were life-bearing worlds, history played out a bit differently here. The Cold War, instead of being a vicious twilight struggle carried out by the USSR and the USA over ideological and imperial ambitions, became a more muted struggle carried out by scientific advancement and achievement in space (This is a much better timeline.{The equal rights amendment passed in this timeline too.}). In this history, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the coups in Argentina, Iran, and the revolutions and civil wars across the third world never happened. With an entire solar system before them, the US and the USSR instead suppressed conflict on Earth. Here the Middle East is a sleepy backwater, imported Martian technology made it insanely easy to create bio-fuels that burned cleaner and longer. The European continental powers created a 3rd power block to create their own space program, while the Warsaw Pact and Asian communist powers united into the Eastbloc for their own efforts (Yaaasss). Meanwhile, the US and the UK have practically united the Commonwealth and Organization of American States (Presumably Cuba is aligned with the EastBloc?{As far as I can tell… No} WTF), as well as bringing in allies like Japan to operate a common space program. Here NASA has a budget measured in the billions and the Pentagon has very little to do.

Now on Venus, civilization is a new thing, with humanity still struggling to advance past the bronze age due to dealing with an extremely active ecosystem inhabited by actual factual dinosaurs (I swear this makes my brain melt…{Stirling didn’t want to sit down and work out a new evolutionary tree, he wanted to write freakin Dinosaurs on freakin Venus, I sympathize with him}). On Mars, however, civilization is ancient and advanced. In some ways more advanced than ours, especially in biological sciences. They are, however, held back by the lack of high energy fuels such as fossil or fissionable fuels (Huh?  That doesn’t make any sense.  Fossil fuels I get, but Mars is gonna have plenty of Uranium and Thorium.{A super-advanced alien species dropped by, terraformed at least two planets, and seeded them with life, for all we know removing the uranium and Thorium was part of the experiment} That still doesn’t make any sense.  I’ll just be over here, Cronkenberging myself.). Another thing holding them back is the fact that their planet is literally dying, while even a terraformed Mars is a harsh place compared to Earth, it's getting worse. Every year there's just a little less water and the Deep Beyond, the bare near lifeless desert that every Martian dreads, gets a little bigger (This also makes no sense.  Unless it is a result of Mars having a shitty electromagnetic field and slowly having its atmosphere blasted off by the solar wind, so it continually loses water vapor into space with the rest of the atmosphere that is imperfectly replaced by some sort of terraforming tech still in place?{The story doesn’t say, only that water is growing rarer and the Deep Beyond is advancing}). It's not something that is going to kill Martian life anytime soon but by the best estimates, in 10,000 years there won't be enough resources to support urban civilization. In 20000 years it'll be impossible for complex life to survive. The Martian response to this is fairly philosophical, although to be fair, I don't think even us Terrans would be given to do much about a problem that was 10,000 years out at best. I mean we keep kicking the can down the road for problems that are only decades or years away (Indeed.  We needed to be swarm-building nuclear plants 20 years ago to avoid the catastrophe.  Now it’s geoengineering and swarm building nuclear power plants…).

However, it's not the future of Mars that interests our protagonist Jeremy Wainman but its past. Once, Mars was united in a single world empire led by the Tollamune Emperors, who started as the rulers of Olympus Mons and at their height commanded a world. However, the empire fell and much was lost in the fall. Jeremy however believes he's found one of the lost cities, the city of Rema Dza, out in the desert near the edge of the Deep Beyond. Alongside veteran Sally Yamashita, he's on a quest to find what had been an important city when the Crimson Kings ruled the entire world. They can't do it alone however and given the lack of Terran numbers on Mars, they have to turn to the locals for the numbers to make this expedition out into the dangerous Martian wilderness. This is where our Martian protagonist Teyud za-Zhaly, a Professional Practitioner of Coercive Violence and a member of the Thoughtful Grace Caste. Let me go a little deeper on that.

The Martians, due to their superior biological technology, engineered themselves into genetic castes; for example, the government of Olympus Mons is made up of people from administrative Castes. People who have been genetically engineered and trained for generations to perform civil service.  Unfortunately, genetic engineering only gets you so far and they are still prone to intrigue and corruption. The Thoughtful Grace caste was bred to be the elite military arm of the Crimson Kings, that said trained and highly fit Terran Humans can keep up with them due to being from a planet with 3 times the gravity of Mars but they're still no one you would want to get into a fight with. Frankly having Teyud along is a good thing for Jeremy and company because where they're going they're going to have to face off against a wide array of horrors as life out in the Martian wilderness is a savage unrelenting struggle for survival and Terrans are a convenient source of protein. Especially slow unobservant ones.

Neither Jeremy nor Sally can afford to be slow or unobservant, even with a super-soldier like Teyud looking out for them because the dangers of the wilderness are only the beginning. The city of Rema Dza holds its own dangers and will not surrender them willingly. As if that wasn't enough of a problem, what they find there may have implications that will pull them into the most dangerous levels of politics on Mars, where death by parasite infestation while on display is all too possible (That’s impressive…). Their enemies have many resources to bring to bear: wild tribes, pirates on great rolling landships, commandos riding jet-sized killer hawks, and more. Against this Jeremy, Sally and Teyud will have to use wit, sword, and pistol to escape their enemies; while figuring out just what it is they've discovered and deal with secrets that could bring them all down. Thankfully their enemies are not united and are often as at odds with each other as they are with our heroes. Our heroes are also not without allies of their own. Allies that are more powerful than they can guess as they're playing a game with much higher stakes than anyone can realize.

I'm going to be honest with you readers. I love this book. Jeremy is a great protagonist, clever without being overbearing, active, and observant, but also flawed enough to lose. He's an anthropologist and an archeologist. This means he's more patient than I'll ever be and a greater fan of pottery shards. I will state that sadly Jeremy doesn't have any military experience so like Marc we were this close to greatness! This is close to the combat anthropologist protagonist that we all so desperately need but I'm sure that will come in its own time (Frigid really just wants someone to put him in a novel.  He’s vain like that.{We all have our ways of trying to get representation.  I call for more college-educated veteran characters who aren’t right-wing, you write massive fan fictions that always have at least one Jewish Gay Communist in the cast.} They’re not always Jews.  My Psi Corps fanfic for instance.  I just Do Not Write Straight Protagonists.). Meanwhile, Teyud is alien enough that reading the chapters from her viewpoint is exciting in and of itself but she is human enough that you can empathize with her and she remains sympathetic. Teyud simply doesn't think like a 21st century American but is flexible enough to understand the viewpoint of one like Jeremy. Frankly, she is a joy to read. Also, Mr. Stirling's use of Martian word choices to show the differences in languages and thought processes is wonderful. It's not too intrusive and flows well in the narrative.

I'll admit my love of this book is bolstered by my love of the older Martian novels, the hidden references to Barsoom and other martian books tickled me without distracting from the plot. At the same time, Mr. Stirling is perfectly willing to show his own vision of Mars, without being shackled by the older novels. Which is exactly what he should do, as much as Princess of Mars holds a place in my affection. I would rather people show me their own ideas and visions rather than trying to hammer Barsoom into a mold it's not meant to fit into. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with fanfiction but in the end, I tend to want to see writers show me their ideas and characters rather than their skill at playing with someone else's toys. Mr. Striling does that here. While showing all due respect to the stories of yesterday and in doing so gives us a grand vision of what might have been.

If you want to see what a modern planetary romance can look like or if you like a good science fiction adventure story, this is your book. I'm giving In the Court of the Crimson Kings by SM Stirling an A. Honestly, I think this book is one of his best.

I hope you enjoyed this review, next week we're looking at book III of Daniel Gibbs Echoes of War series, So Fight I. After that, we're heading into a month of Philip K Dick, where I look at the works of Philip K Dick and how they have been adapted by Hollywood and discuss their influence. Those works along with this review and the next book were all chosen by the vote of our ever-wise Patrons. If you'd like a vote, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads the Febuary poll is still open and our March poll will be going up soon! A dollar a month gives you a vote!

*A quick note, I've run into some argument over whether or not Stirlings Mars has uranium and oil or not. Since it's based on the dialogue of a character in the book, who is a Martian administrator and not a scientist, it's entirely possible that Stirlings Mars has fissionable material and the character is flat out wrong or their civilization just hasn't really found any.

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-sky-people-by-sm-stirling.html review of the last book in the series

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders