2023 SF, first of a planned trilogy. The generation ships arrived in
the Treble over a thousand years ago. Now rule is a complicated
tension between the overall government, the Kindom, and the First
Families. Several people are planning to do something about that.
And some of them are not very nice. Much of what happens here is
due to the actions of Esek Nightfoot, a well-born cleric who values
plans within plans well above any considerations of ethics or
well-being. She's a horrible person, and specifically an abuser of
everyone she can; and yet Jacobs writes her well enough that I found
myself with some grudging sympathy for her, or at least for the person
she might have become in a different world.
As science fiction goes it's pretty soft, but the SF is really here as
a backdrop to the stories of people and factions; I was reminded of
The Splinter in the Sky, though the events here are on a much larger
scale, and rather than colonisers and victims everyone here is a
victim until they find some way of preventing it, which all too often
means victimising those below them in the power hierarchy.
Plot? Well, a data storage device has been stolen, and it could prove
highly embarrassing to the Nightfoot clan; but really that's almost a
sideshow compared with the high-level politicking. And why is the
government doing favours for one unpopular faction, the Jevese, to the
extent that anti-Jevese riots are expected?
It's the people one reads for. Chono, formerly one of Esek's
apprentices, who went into the clergy and unlike everyone else we meet
seems actually to be a true believer. Of course that didn't stop her
beating someone to death when she felt it was needed. Jun, the
"caster" (hacker) who was all unknowing set on her path by Esek. Six,
the asasssin-apprentice whom Esek has been hunting for over a decade.
They each have their own sections, and their own voices.
It has its moments of nastiness, but they feel necessary. I loved it.