Hugo Nominee Review: Witch King, by Martha Wells

Hugo Nominee Review: Witch King, by Martha Wells

by Rich Horton

Here is the fifth of my reviews of the 2024 Hugo nominees for Best Novel. Martha Wells published her first novel, The Element of Fire, when she was 28, in 1993. It was well-received, getting a nomination for the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, and she went on to publish five novels and a half-dozen or so short stories in its series, collectively called Ile-Rien. She began another series, the Books of the Raksura, in 2011, and that too comprises five novels and some short fiction, and it was shortlisted for the 2018 Hugo for Best Series. All those stories are Fantasy, and until 2017 her only science fiction was some work in the Star Wars and Stargate franchises. But in 2017 she published All Systems Red, the first novella in her Murderbot series, which is definitely SF. It was an immediate sensation. I remember the buzz about Murderbot at the 2017 World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio, where Wells was the Toastmaster. The stories and novels have since won four Hugos: two for Best Novella, one for Best Novel, and one for Best Series. I think they are definitely deserving, for what that's worth. More recently, she has nobly taken to withdrawing Murderbot stories from award consideration, presumably feeling that they've received their fair share of recognition. This includes this year, in which she withdrew Nebula and Hugo nominations for the Murderbot novel System Collapse. But Witch King, the first in a new Fantasy series, is still on the ballot.

I have only read a couple of Wells' fantasy short stories (which were quite good) -- the only longer works I've read by her until now are Murderbot stories. So Witch King is an introduction of sorts, for me, to this important aspect of her oeuvre. I will add that according to the Amazon listing, the book is the first in the Rising World trilogy, but it works quite well as a standalone novel. (That said, there is plenty of room for more stories in this world.)

The novel is told on two threads. The main character is Kai, a demon prince who is called the Witch King. The novel opens as he wakes from some form of imprisonment underwater. It turns out he has been wakened by an expositor -- some form of magic worker -- who planned to make him a familiar to increase his power. This doesn't go well for him. Kai ends up freeing his friend Ziede, a witch (an actual witch -- not a demon called Witch King!) They escape, and realize quickly that while they were gone Ziede's wife Tahren Stargard, an Immortal Blessed, has also been captured and imprisoned -- an action that threatens the stability of the treaties maintaining the Rising World, a new polity that emerged after the Hierachs' War, some 60 years earlier. 

Lots of questions already! What are demons? What are witches? What are Immortal Blessed? What are expositors? What are Hierarchs? We learn the answers over time. (In essence, all are different sorts of magic users. This world also has mortals, some of whom can become magic users such as expositors.) Each type of magic is different, with limits and costs. The other question is -- what happened 60 years ago? And for that, we get the other thread.

This thread also involves Kai, Ziede, and Tahren (after all, they are all immortal to some degree or other.) Kai is now (then) Kai-Enna, a demon who has taken the body of a dead member of the Saredi people, according the the terms of a treaty Kai's (human) grandmother established, whereby demons can come from the Underearth to the surface to live among the Saredi -- but only by occupying the body of a dead human. We see Kai-Enna as an adolescent -- but war is coming, as the mysterious Hierarchs advance, using their tremendous magical weapons to obliterate all in their path. The Immortal Blessed have allied with the Hierrachs, but one, Tahren Stargard, has rebelled and tries to help the mortals resist the Hierarchs. Kai, having taken another body after Enna's death, ends up imprisoned. But with the help of a brilliant mortal Prince-heir, Bashasa, he and the witch Ziede and Tahren manage to kill two of the Hierarchs -- something thought impossible. But in the process Kai takes over the body of a living expositor -- a terrible betrayal of the agreement the demons had made. This alienates some demons, but Kai and Bashasa and company are more concerned with taking the battle to the Hierarchs.

Meanwhile, in the more recent thread, Kai, Ziede, and a growing band of allies (a street child they rescued from the expositor, some soldiers another expositor had enslaved, Tahren's brother Dahin, and more) journey to recover a "finding stone" that may lead them to Tahren, while being chased by what appear to be members of a conspiracy to disrupt the Rising World. 

I don't want to say much more. The plot is well executed, and both threads are great fun. The magic is effectively portrayed and in context convincing. The political questions are worthwhile. There are deep mysteries in this world that may provide material for further books. The gender background is intriguing if kind of understated -- for example, Kai is a demon who strongly identifies as male, but he occupies both female and male bodies without stress or change in his personal identification. Tahren and Ziede are both female and are married, and Ziede has a child, but it's not clear (to me, perhaps I'm obtuse) who the father is or if Tahren is even though she's female. The battles are well described, the geography is interesting. 

It's a good, fun, novel. But is it a Hugo winner? I'm not so sure. For one thing, it's -- well, it's in many ways a typical fantasy novel. A well done fantasy novel, to be sure, but while it rings some interesting changes on some of the tropes it plays with, it doesn't really do anything spectacularly new. I liked it. I'm glad I read it. I'll read more in the series as they come. But, for my Hugo votes, I want something at another level.

Review: The Blazing World, by Margaret Cavendish

Review: The Blazing World, by Margaret Cavendish

by Rich Horton

This is one of the better known works of what might be called early proto-SF. And its author is one of the more interesting authors. She was born in 1623, the youngest child of Sir Thomas Lucas. They were a Royalist family. In 1644, she went into exile in France with William Cavendish, the Marquess of Newcastle, and they married in 1645. He was 30 years her senior, and had five children by his previous marriage -- she never bore him any children, but the marriage seems to have been a loving and successful one. They returned to England after the Restoration, and William's title was elevated to Duke of Newcastle, so that Margeret Cavendish is known as the Duchess of Newcastle (or Newcastle-upon-Tyne). She died in 1673.

Margaret was a very prolific writer, on philosophical subjects and natural history. She also wrote some 20 plays, and several works of fiction, poems, a memoir, and a biography of her husband. The Blazing World -- full title The Description of a New World, called the Blazing World -- appeared in 1666, a companion to her Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. She was the most significant woman writer of her time, though Aphra Behn, about 17 years her junior, was also a major contributor.

The Blazing World remains her most famous work. Partly this is because her philosophical works, and her natural history, have been superseded by later discoveries. The Blazing World itself, however, is to some extent a philosophical tract, and much of it concerns her ideas on politics, gender, and natural philosophy.

The story opens with a man kidnapping a woman of higher social status than him. She is not terribly excited about this, and the man flees with her to the North Pole -- and there learns that there is another world joined to his world at the pole. It is very cold, and he and his fellows die, but the young woman survives and is taken into this new world, which, we learn, is the Blazing World. She is transported by a sequence of the different intelligent creatures of this world to the home of the Emperor, who immediately makes her his Empress. 

Much of the rest of the novel concerns the Empress' investigations into the nature of this new world, and by extension, to the nature of natural science in general. She makes use of the investigations of the various peoples of the Blazing World, who each have different abilities -- so, she discusses with the Bear-men, Fox-men, Bird-men, Syrens, Fish-men, and so on, asking about different aspects of the world. Eventually she decides she needs a scribe, which must be a woman, and she ends up recruiting the Duchess of Newcastle, and there are further discussions, contrasting the politics and social organization of the Blazing World with the Duchess' home. (There is a fair amount of satire in this section.)  Cavendish's politics were certainly Royalist, and she advocates for a benevolent monarchy. She is not a radical about gender (for her period) but certainly an advocate for women's intellectual prowess. 

The book closes with a section in which the Empress desires to intervene from the Blazing World in favor of her home country, which is under attack. (This section seems to me to imply that she was not from our Earth, but a third separate world.) This bit reads a bit unfortunately to me -- in essence advocating for her country to conquer her entire world. There are also curious bits in which a plea is made to allow the Duchess' unproduced plays a theater -- in London -- in which they can be produced. This seemed a bit odd to me.

In the end this is a odd confection. It's wildly imaginative, and interest purely for that. It's not much of a novel, really -- the fictional part is a thin lattice on which to hang the imaginative and philosophical speculations. It's written -- not surprisingly -- in 17th Century prose, which is hard going at times, though I think some editorial attention to normalize spelling and to introduce more paragraph breaks would have helped. My edition is from Ian Randal Strock's Fantastic Books imprint -- but I confess I've decided to get a Penguin edition with some more editorial matter, and with a couple additional prose works of fiction, I'm glad I read this -- it's fascinating in its way, it's important in its way -- but I couldn't quite love it.

Review: Cold-Forged Flame, and Lightning in the Blood, by Marie Brennan

Review: Cold-Forged Flame, and Lightning in the Blood, by Marie Brennan

by Rich Horton

Marie Brennan has been publishing short SF and Fantasy (mostly Fantasy, I think) for a couple of decades, after winning the Asimov's Undergraduate Award back in 2003. (That's an award which spurred some excellent careers over time -- writers like Rich Larson, Marissa Lingen, Eric Choi, and Seth Dickinson are also among the past winners.) I've enjoyed a lot of her short fiction over the years, including the pieces that became her mosain novel Driftwood (2020), as well as "From the Editorial Pages of the Falchester Weekly Review" (a short story related to her popular Lady Trent novels) and “Vīs Dīlendī”. 

The novellas I review here were published by Tor.com in 2016 and 2017. I got them from John O'Neill at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention a few weeks ago, a couple among a great many duplicates John had. (I too had a number of duplicates from other places, some of which made their way into John's hands.)

The two books concern Ree, whom we meet "coming into existence" as Cold-Forged Flame opens. She has no idea of her name, only a dim sense of her abilities (she is a warrior, for one thing) and of her character (suspicious, prickly) -- but also aware that she is bound to do what the nine people who have summoned her ask. After some debate, she learns what these people want: she must go and bring back a vial of blood from the cauldron of the Lhian. And, in exchange, they offer her her freedom -- and, but only after the fact, what knowledge they have of her ... history. To tell too much in advance would harm her, they suggest.

So she is rowed to a mysterious island in a nearby bay. And immediately presented with a series of challenges, in almost game-like mode. (For a moment I worried that this would be a story set in a game universe, but thankfully that's not the case.) She struggles to climb a dangerous cliff, and in the processes meets a man on a similar quest. Again her suspicions take over, but she eventually agrees to cooperate with this Aedet, as they work they were through more obstacles, finally finding the cave which holds the cauldron of Lhian.

The story turns, then, on a couple of things: Ree learning a bit of her true nature -- she is an archon (just as his Lhian) -- a person built of story; and on Aedet understanding, with Ree's help, just what he needs to ask for. (He is a revolutionary, opposing a repressive usurper in his home country.) And then Ree returns the vial to the people who summoned her -- with a similar lesson for them. And they grant her her freedom, as the promised (instead of returning her to the apeiron, where archons are sort of maintained until they are summoned) -- and she can begin to search for more fragments of her memory.

In Lightning in the Blood, we see Ree returning to Solaike, Aedet's home country. The revolution has been successful, the usurper deposed, and a new King installed. Ree quickly encounters a group of people -- the Korenat, travelers, essentially Romani-analogues -- who have been attacked by marauders. Once this group realizes Ree can be trusted, they beg for her help: they'd like permission to stay in Solaike, and of course the marauders are a threat to the whole country. Ree reluctantly helps -- she has some influence, as her friend Aedet is one of the "King's Wives", a ceremonial term for especially important advisors. And she also has learned that one of the group she has encountered is another archon. This man recognizes her as another archon -- and more to the point, he thinks she is an archon of the Korenat. But Ree cannot believe this -- and she has no thread of memory suggesting it might be true.

Much of the novella is taken up with some political maneuvering, involving both who will lead a group aimed at eliminating the marauding group, the Red Leopard, which is led by a General from the preceding regime. But another aspect is the fate of archons in Solaike. The usurper had outlawed them, and killed any he found. There is pressure on the new King to retain this policy -- archons are feared -- but also a realization that Ree, at least, had been of great help in the revolution.

More important is Ree's struggle to learn more of her true full nature. And, while she is wandering the woods during the expedition against the Red Leopard, she has a mysterious revelation. In the end, all the threads from this specific story are tied up neatly -- the future of archons in Solaike is clear, the Red Leopard are vanquished, and Ree has some more clarity as to her true nature -- and a there's a slingshot to the possibility of more stories in this world. 

Alas, however, no further stories about Ree have yet appeared, though clearly some were planned. There is a short story, "The City of the Tree", from Uncanny in 2020, that is set in the same world but does not feature Ree. These two novellas serve as an interesting setup. The first novella is pretty strong -- the second one doesn't work as well, but is a reasonable hinge to potential future stories about the same character. Perhaps we'll see some some day. Brennan's website, and the subtitle to the second novella ("A Book of the Varekai") suggest that the collective title for the series might be The Varekai.

Review: To the Resurrection Station, by Eleanor Arnason

Review: To the Resurrection Station, by Eleanor Arnason

by Rich Horton

Eleanor Arnason is one of my favorite writers, but until now I had really only read her short fiction. I love almost all her Hwarhath stories, perhaps most particularly "The Lovers", "The Actors", and "The Potter of Bones"; and also her Lydia Duluth stories, especially "Stellar Harvest". She has written many other excellent shorter works: very recently, "Mr. Catt"; early in her career, "The Warlord of Saturn's Moons"; and in between, stories like "Mammoths of the Great Plains", "My Husband Steinn", "The Grammarian's Five Daughters", "Kormak the Lucky", "The Scrivener", "Knapsack Poems", and many others.

You might think I'd have started in on her novels with the Hwarhath one, Ring of Swords; or with her Tiptree winner, A Woman of the Iron People; or with Daughter of the Bear King, also highly regarded. But a couple of weeks ago, with my grandkids staying with us (which is lovely but absolutely exhausting), I wanted something shorter and lighter, and picked up her second novel, To the Resurrection Station (1986). And I need to warn in advance -- I have a feeling my reading experience was reflected first by reading it in very small snippets in between getting up to calm a screaming toddler, and later by finishing it while suffering from what turned out to be Covid.

The story opens on the planet New Hope, which had been lightly colonized by humans a few centuries earlier. A young woman, Belinda Smith, has been summoned from New Harvard college to her uncle and guardian's place, Gorwing Keep. There she learns to her shock that she is not named Smith but Hernshaw -- and that she is a descendant of the Captain of the ship that brought humans to the planet. Also, that she is ALSO a descendant of one of the planet's natives. For New Hope has an indigenous population, though it should be said they are extremely human-like. Worse, native law requires that she marry one of them -- a man named Claud. Worse still, they soon realize that they each have lovers in the big city, Port Discovery, and that the lovers are the same person -- Belinda's roommate Marianne. 

This all seems like potentially a wacky comedy, but though it's lightly funny at times, and there's plenty of underlying satire, it's not really a comedy. Belinda and Claud mutually agree they don't want to marry, though they soon learn that Marianne herself is actually married to someone else. Strange things keep happening -- notably, Gorwing Keep turns out to contain a spaceship, which they twice use to escape potential death or prison. There are encounters with natives (their relatives) and with humans, including a crazy policeman. And they are accompanied by a robot who claims to be Godfrey Hernshaw -- Belinda's ancestor, the original Captain, who had his brain uploaded to the robot as he was dying. They decide to flee back to Earth, even though it is a ruined planet after war broke out between humans and robots. On Earth, the robot hopes to find one of the "resurrection stations", which can transplant brains back into android bodies. Belinda and Claud aren't sure what they want.

Earth, it turns out, or at least the ruins of New York City, is occupied by crazy robots, crazy uplifted rats, crazy humans, and poetry-loving dolphins. And the threesome from New Hope, soon joined by a rat they rescue, keep searching for the resurrection station, which apparently is in Brooklyn. But will that really solve their problems?

I found the novel a bit hard to get into for the first half or so (on New Hope.) I didn't find the natives or humans very interesting characters, for the most part, and the action seemed haphazard and often silly. This is explained, mind you, by a psi power Belinda seems to possess, but I didn't find that satisfying. Things get more interesting on Earth, especially in the final section of the novel, which is sometimes quite funny and even moving. The ending is -- I think on purpose -- rather unresolved (and possibly a sequel could have been written, though perhaps the themes of this book had been sufficiently examined.) The science and worldbuilding don't hold together much, but I don't think this was meant to be that kind of novel. On the whole, a lesser part of Arnason's ouevre, for sure. I probably wouldn't start here if I was planning to investigate Arnason -- read some of the stories I mentioned above! For myself, I should probably get to Ring of Swords next.

Hugo Nominee Review: The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera

Hugo Nominee Review: The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera

by Rich Horton

Counting my review of Ann Leckie's Translation State, which I wrote last year before Hugo nominations were made, this is the fourth of my series for 2024. I'm reading Witch King, by Martha Wells, right now, and then I'll proceed to John Scalzi's Starter Villain. But the intervals before those next reviews will be a bit longer -- for various reasons (such as two weeks looking after my grandkids!) I didn't get to the three previous reviews until I had finished all three books.

This is another first novel, but Vajra Chandrasekera has been publishing short fiction for about a decade. This novel has gotten a tremendous amount of praise -- as, really, have all the nominees, but to my mind, this novel has gotten a bit more notice than the others. And with good reason -- this is a very ambitious novel, and very well-written. It is trying to do a lot, and succeeding at a fair bit of what it tries.

The story is told primarily from the point of view of Fetter. Fetter's mother tore his shadow from him at birth, and as a consequence, besides not casting a shadow, he is not tightly rooted to the ground: he will float into the air if he doesn't take care. His mother also teaches him to be an assassin, from an early age, and she prepares him to commit the Five Unforgivables, as defined by his absent father's theology -- for his father is a "saint", the Perfect and Kind. These crimes are matricide, heresy, killing of saints, patricide, and killing the Perfect and Kind. Nice family!

After this short introduction, we proceed to Fetter in adulthood. He has left his mother and moved to the city of Luriat. He has joined a group of the "unchosen" -- people who were passed over for the status of prophet or saint of a religion. Fetter qualifies, of course, due to his father being the Perfect and Kind, and we soon learn that his father's religion is gaining influence and that his father may come to Luriat some time in the relatively near future. Fetter also has a boyfriend, and some friends in the group of the Unchosen, but still seems to be drifting in life. 

And then there are the Bright Doors. These are doors in buildings all over Luriat -- any door might become a Bright Door if left shut long enough. Birght Doors can not ordinarily be opened -- and if you enter one's building from another doorway, you will see no evidence of it. For this reason many houses in the city don't really have doors. There is a city department that assigns people to monitor Bright Doors, and Fetter signs up for this.

Fetter's mother is dying, and she begins calling him, on an unconnected phone, and starts telling him stories about her past, her marriage, Fetter's father, and so on. These are very strange, and indeed they clearly bring the novel into the realm of magical realism. Meanwhile one of Fetter's Unchosen friends lures him into a sort of revolutionary group, one focussed at first on putting on a satirical play. And Fetter's father and his army of pilgrims come closer and closer.

It becomes clearer and clearer that the city of Luriat is a very unjust place, and also that the Perfect and Kind will not improve things. And we can see, more or less, the shape of the climax, though Chandrasekera surprises us in some ways. As I said, it's a very ambitious novel, and there is a lot to admire. But somehow for me it didn't quite land. There is a narrative trick at the closing section that, while it's clearly prepared for, didn't work for me. And the magical realist aspect, while quite cool, failed to convince, and I'm not sure it was needed. I didn't really get as involved in the social issues brought up by the novel -- there is a distancing aspect to some of it.

Perhaps this is nitpicking, perhaps I am not the right reader, or perhaps I should reread the book. It's clearly impressive, and a quick look at his upcomimg novel, Rakesfall, makes it seem potentially even more impressive. Even with my misgivings, this is a novel that may well have been on my nomination list had I read it in time. 

Hugo Nominee Review: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

Hugo Nominee Review: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

by Rich Horton

In my series of Hugo Best Novel nominee reviews I'm dividing the authors into two camps: one is veteran writers with boatloads of Hugos and Hugo nominations already (Ann Leckie, Martha Wells, John Scalzi.) The other is new writers with no Hugos. Two of these writers obviously fit the category -- Emily Tesh and Vajra Chandrasekera -- in that they were nominated for their first novel. (Though Tesh has a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.) But S. A. Chakraborty (as she bylined her first novels) is kind of in-between -- The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is her fourth novel, and she even has a Hugo nomination, in the Best Series category, for her first three novels, The Daevabad Trilogy. (For what it's worth, I really like that cover image, by Ivan Belikov.)

(Interestingly, all three of these "young" writers are past their twenties (or appear to be -- I don't know how old Tesh is, but she does say, in an interview I found, that she "taught Latin for many years", so I'm guessing she's over 30.) I think a lot of recent "new" writers have come to novels after a long time doing other work. Possibly that's one reason their first novels get award nominations -- they may be "new" writers but they have plenty of other experience. That said, best guess is all of this "young" triad are 45 or under, while all of the "old" triad in are in their mid to late 50s. Scalzi and Leckie, however, were in their 30s and 40s when their first novels appeared (and got Hugo nominations!) so this isn't a completely new trend. But all of this is just observation, unimportant to evaluating their work.)

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is the first in what appears to be destined to be a longish series. The first book resolves most of the key issues it raises -- and it doesn't cheat the reader in that sense -- but it sets the stage for what could be several further volumes. I'm guessing the collective title will still be The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, and I wonder if later editions of the novel will get a subtitle, much like Star Wars: A New Hope.

Amina al-Sirafi is a pirate in a fantastical 12th Century. She lives on the coast of the Arabian Sea (or so I think), and the action of the novel ranges from Western India to East Africa to Southern Arabia to various islands in the Indian Ocean. As the novel opens, she is living in retirement with her daughter Marjana, who is about 10. However, a rich woman disturbs her peace, insisting that Amina recover her granddaughter Dunya, who has apparently been kidnapped by a murderous but magically powerful Frank. Amina doesn't want anything to do with this job -- it will be very dangerous and will take her away from her beloved daughter. But the woman is able to essentially blackmail Amina -- and, besides, a teenage girl in peril is hard to abandon. (Especially when that girl turns out to be the daughter of one of Amina's former crewmates.)

So Amina begins to investigate, and soon realizes that Dunya's situation is more complicated than her grandmother has portrayed -- it seems that Dunya, a promising scholar, may have run away to escape an arranged marriage to a much older man. Nonetheless, Amina feels compelled to continue her quest, and the novel takes the form of a traditional caper story, beginning with reassembling Amina's old crew: her first mate, Tinbu; her navigator, Majed; and Dalila, a Christian woman and expert poisoner. (Eventually the cast of characters becomes quite diverse in terms of religion, gender, age, and sexuality.) In time she reunites as well with her husband, Marjana's father, who is a demon. 

The story is very exciting -- it's probably the most pure fun of the nominees I've read to date. The villain (the Frank) is truly a horrible murderer. There are fascinating monsters, a magical island, some well done comic scenes. It's also nicely framed, with Amina telling her story to a scribe, Jamal -- and who Jamal actually is eventually becomes an interesting and important point.

The book isn't perfect. My main issue is the prose, which is kind of a mixed bag. Voice is a very important component of prose, and the voices here (mainly Amina's but also Jamal's) are quite well captured -- a bit 21st Century to be sure but that's hard to avoid. They are lively and involving. The problem, though, is that it needed a pretty rigorous copy-editing step that it didn't seem to get. There are lots of words that don't mean what the story seems to think. I know lots of people don't care about prose, but I do, and errors of this sort just nag at me.

So -- a fun novel, worth reading. Would I have nominated it? Probably not, but I can see why people did, and it's not a bad nomination. 

Hugo Nominee Review: Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh

Hugo Nominee Review: Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh

by Rich Horton

I'm going to be doing a review of each of the Hugo nominated novels over the next couple of weeks. I actually have already reviewed one of them, Ann Leckie's Translation State. For the most part these reviews will be somewhat short.

In recent years, quite a few Hugo nominations have gone to first novels, and this year there are two of those. One is Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh. Tesh is a British writer, and her previous publications, two linked novellas from Tor.com, received lots of positive attention -- indeed, the first of these, Silver in the Wood (2019), won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. Its sequel is Drowned Country (2020), and the two are collectively the Greenhallow duology. Alas, I have not read either. So, for me, Emily Tesh came out of nowhere with Some Desperate Glory -- but clearly she didn't, with two previous slim books that were well-received. That said, Some Desperate Glory is SF -- even, at some level, Space Opera -- and thus quite a contrast to her other work, which I understand is dark fantasy.

The novel opens on Gaea Station, a small space habitat in which live the remmants of humanity who survived the destruction of Earth. This small group has sworn revenge on the aliens who destroyed (as in blew to bits) the Earth -- a loose federation of sorts collectively called the Majo, comprising several different races and even one human-occupied planet, Chrysothemis. Gaea Station faces very long odds, though -- they have only relatively few small ships, plus the remnants of four dreadnoughts the engines of which power the station. Their society is also harsh and strict -- the children, all born without know their birth parents, undergo military training from the age of 7, and at 17 they are assigned to their long term roles, which might involved military responsibilities, station maintenance, or "Nursery". None of this ever seems pleasant, but it's even worse when we learn that the women assigned to Nursery are expected to bear children every couple of years for a couple of decades, and are required to submit to the attentions of any eligible man who wants them. (Some of this I deduced -- it's not all explained.)

The main character is Valkyr, called Kyr. In the rather YA-flavored opening section, we learn that she is (naturally) the bestest ever female soldier trainee, with only her slightly older brother Magnus having better scores than she. We see her as the leader of her cadre of 17 year old woman, just as they are ready for their assignments. We gather quickly that she is a rather unpleasant person. And we slowly realize that she's confused by a few things -- one is her older sister, Ursa, who betrayed Gaea years earlier by leaving for Chrysothemis. The other is her learning that her brother is queer, and in love with Avi, a very small and bratty young man who is a computer genius. And, finally, there is the matter of the Majo ship that is captured, and which contains an alien, one of the originating race of the Majo, the Majo Ze. And her world completely changes when she learns that Magnus has been sent to Chrysothemis on a secret mission to disrupt the ceremony at which the planet will receive a node of the Wisdom, a sort of supercomputer which makes decisions for the best of everyone in the Majo -- decisions like destroying Earth.  At the same time Kyr learns her assignment -- Nursery! Instead, she rebels and decides to steal a ship and head for Chrysothemis -- to take direct action against the Majo, as she feels she is best suited for, and also to save her brother from what seems like a suicide mission. 

This first section is at times hard to take. Part of it is that Kyr is an asshole -- which is the point, sort of, but also is overdone, and becomes contradicted in later sections. The other part is that a lot of the details about Gaea Station just don't hold together. The thing is -- partly -- that the next part, on Chrysothemis, is much better. And the story really becomes quite interesting. I'm not going to detail the rest of the plot at all, as there are spoilers aplenty in almost anything I could say. But in the end, this is a novel that frustrated me throughout -- there are some great ideas, some interesting moral questions, some cool science fictional notions. And at the same time, all along, there are annoying aspects: thin worldbuilding, implausible (or arbitrary) character development, a failure to fully interrogate some of the (truly worthwhile) moral questions, and occasional downright silliness. And, a whole lot of overegging the pudding in establishing the villainy of the central villains. (When will authors realize that bad people are still complex people, and bad situations are still usually mixed -- there is no reason to go back and check every single "villain box"!)

In the end, I have to come down somewhere in the middle. First, I'll say, the novel is on balance an enjoyable read, especially after the opening section. I'm glad I read it, and I'll try further things Emily Tesh writes. But set against that there are real flaws, and if they aren't quite fatal they are damaging. It modulated oddly from straight YA at the start, to a more adult novel in the middle, back to an overly convenient and very YA-ish ending. (I note, of course, that the very best YA fiction avoids this -- and much so-called "adult" fiction leans into it.) The prose is -- mostly just fine, but never special. (There are a few solecisms, but I admit I wondered if a couple of these were misreads by the reader of the audiobook I listened to.) Would I have nominated it for a Hugo? No. But am I happy to have read it? Yes.