2007 science fiction. The starship Fenrir was lost ten years ago to
a misjump, but its warp engine has just reappeared in open space…
embedded in coral, and accompanied by three dead bodies and a fishing
boat. Captain Mikhail Ivanovich Volkov takes the frigate Svoboda to
find out where the Fenrir has been.
This book is a great many different things. It's a sensawunda and
Big Dumb Object book in the tradition of Ringworld or Orbitsville;
but it's also about the Reds, genetically modified soldiers, and how
and why they're treated as subhuman; and about a bunch of different
aliens; and about how to cope when the love of your life lives in a
completely different world both physically and mentally; and about
finding God.
Humans are all alone in that place you're from. All they seem to do
is examine each other under a microscope to find differences. Why do
they feel the need to say "you're not like me?" We don't do that
here, because we have the minotaurs and the civ and obiaan. If
anything, we cling to each other and say "thank God, you're human
too."
That's almost too much. Almost. It's the characters who save it:
Mikhail, clone-heir of the tsar of Novaya Rus, who's even more in his
father's shadow than most great men's sons; Turk, the Red who, rather
than being raised in a dehumanising creche, has grown up as Mikhail's
brother, but still carries an inferiority complex about his heritage;
and Paige Bailey, captain of a small salvage and merchant ship, who's
tied up in family obligations.
Everybody makes mistakes, but they're mistakes that those people
would make. The aliens are well-drawn, plausibly inhuman, and in
some cases it's unclear whether they're sentient at all.
While the ending is perhaps a little abrupt, the only thing that
really doesn't work for me is the military terminology: we have
unexplained phrases like
The muzzle of a railgun cannon jutting out of the bow marked the
ship as a carrier-class
when a "carrier" is normally the sort of big warship that doesn't
have a large gun, and terms like "frigate" and "destroyer" get bandied
around in a way that makes them just labels. Proofing is also sloppy:
"causal" for "casual", "yakuta" for "yukata".
But in spite of those problems this is an excellent and highly
enjoyable book. Although it's a stand-alone novel, I'd like to spend
more time seeing this world, and observing these people.
Recommended by vatine.
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