Stars and Bones

Straight up space opera, with a good plot and decent enough characters and a (Peter F. Hamilton-esque) touch of light horror. Not too dissimilar to Adrian Tchaikovskys Final Architect series, well worth it for anyone enjoying that. Heading straight into the next in the series now.

Gareth Powell doesn't write bad books. Dude just keeps knocking space opera out of the park. That's all he knows how to do.

It's definitely more of a 3.5.

I don't usually go for hard sci-fi books but I'm slowly getting intrigued by the space opera style books and I was immediately interested when I first got to know about this book. I've just been waiting since then to find the right time to begin. And it turned out to be something quite unexpected.

I'm usually in it for the characters - I can tolerate anything in a book as long as I can love the characters (atleast a few of them). But it was just the opposite in this one. I completely fell in love with the setting and the ideas that form the core of this story. The author has written a world where humanity now lives on huge spaceships called arks created by super intelligent aliens called Angels of Benevolence. Each of these arks is like a world of its own - artificially created landscapes as preferred by the residents, a culture and way of living which is unique to the ark, the shape of the ark itself is molded based on its resident's vision and purpose, and the ark's consciousness creates blue colored envoys who are most representative of the ark. I reveled in getting to know each of the ark's quirks better as the characters kept visiting them and I just wanted to know more. And considering that the life on the arks essentially is a post-capitalist utopia, it was both surprising and not to see that some people have still banded together to fight this collective society and want to keep up with the classist and capitalist systems of old. I guess it is a critique of humankind as a whole that even if humans move away from earth and have to live a very different kind of life, it's not easy to forget the prejudices and bigotry that they have been carrying for ever.

The plot itself though was engaging enough. There's quite a bit of action and many chapters end in cliffhangers, so I always wanted to know what was gonna happen next. I've read some complaints that there were issues regarding the science and sci-fi elements of the story but I'm not someone who knows much about all this stuff, so I didn't find any such problems. However, I did feel that there were many things which were unrealistic, even for an action packed futuristic story. The dialogue was fun and interesting and even philosophical at times which I enjoyed, but the internal monologue of the main character felt a bit too much at times.

The main character Eryn is someone I sympathized with because she has suffered many losses and I could understand she was traumatized. But there was just something off about her which I can't articulate. Her character seemed so inconsistent, even in her own thoughts, and I didn't know what to make of it. She was also written like an old school stereotypical YA heroine who is an ordinary person thrust into chaos and suddenly has to save humanity from annihilation. Her nostalgic and misplaced grieving thoughts about her one night stand 15 years ago who was a cheater, her thinking one moment that she doesn't know how to be a parent to her teenage niece and then a few days later thinking that she can apply the lessons that she learnt from parenting a teenager to solve an existential threat to humanity - getting a deep dive in her POV just didn't endear me to her.

There are many side characters and we even get a few POVs but there were very few who left a lasting impression. I mostly adored Ocelot, who is the envoy of Eryn's scout ship's consciousness. He was witty and kind and compassionate and so loyal to those he has to protect. There were quite a few other ark envoys who made small appearances but were intriguing. It was the humans who were not so impressive. Firstly, the author kills a lot of people throughout the book, so many characters couldn't even get any development. Among the living, Frank is a typical genius scientist who loves his research but doesn't care for much else, Maddie is a typical teenager who is grieving and hurt and hates her remaining family and Li pretty much exists as a love interest and no other development of her own. Even the romantic arc between Eryn and Li felt a bit forced. But among the unknown, I have to say that the angels who saved humanity but seemed too indifferent with what humans did with this second chance were fascinating to read about; and the unknown alien entity hellbent on destroying everything was also very well written and I loved getting to know it's story.

On the whole, I'm having very mixed thoughts about this book. If you are someone who can appreciate the setting and the ideas and concepts the author is going for and like some fast paced action, maybe you'll like this. But I would say maybe don't go for this if you like character focused stories. But I think I'm impressed enough with this world that I might give the sequel a try, though it probably won't be at the top of my awaiting list.

This novel is a fresh start for Powell, after wrapping up the Embers Of War trilogy. It's set in a new universe, with an excellent and original background, and sees Powell moving towards the darker territory of, say, an Alastair Reynolds. There's a lot of pain and anguish in this book and a focus on violent death and emotional distress that wasn't there before. That's not to say he's suddenly gone all grimdark on us, as a key theme is found families, and relationships strengthening under pressure, and the core of the novel is the kind of rattling space opera fun that has become his trademark, but it is more sombre than some of his previous work. Nevertheless, it's a great read that SF fans will have a lot of fun with. No idea if it's a standalone or the beginning of a larger series - while the story is largely done at the end of the book the setting is strong enough to stand some more novels in this universe, and I'd welcome them