Heavy are the heads that wear the crowns
One of the things I have come to accept about my taste in literature is that I just like space opera. I like the vastness of space and the technological feel of the twentieth century’s imagination of the far future, even if the physics in it is completely impossible. Space opera romanticizes the twentieth century in the way that much fantasy romanticizes the world before the industrial revolution, and you can tell very similar stories in each. With that all true, I admit that if it is presented in a space opera I will enjoy it more than a fantasy presentation. I can account for my taste by virtue of being a longtime Star Wars fan. And, I can say with confidence, that Emily Skrutskie’s space opera Bloodright trilogy (comprised of, in order, Bonds of Brass, Oaths of Legacy, and Vows of Empire) is one of the best space operas I’ve ever read.
Reading through this series I got this feeling that it drew a lot from fan fiction, and a lot from Young Adult literature, and to be absolutely clear I mean none of that as an insult. Skrutskie wrote a YA duology before this, and her interview with Nerds of a Feather back in 2020 (conducted by contributor emerita Andrea Johnson) notes that the series became particularly popular among a segment of the online Star Wars fandom, particularly those who ship Finn and Poe Dameron from the sequels. In the acknowledgements of the second book, she thanks the cover artist that made a cover that ended up appealing to that fandom; indeed I suspect that such a pairing inspired the central romance of the series but I cannot find direct evidence for that anywhere.
The first book starts with two leads, both young men, in a military academy on a recently conquered planet. Skrutskie knows how to start her story off with a bang; immediately you get a harrowing space battle scene (for they are in pilot training), and it was there, incidentally, that I knew I was going to love this series. You eventually learn that one of these young men is in fact the heir to the throne, the Umber Empire, which has recently conquered this world and the Archon Empire of which said world was once part, and established this academy as part of its reconstruction of the battered world. The other one is a native of this planet, Rana, who joined up to make a living. From there, the plot will twist and turn in all sorts of exhilarating, delectable ways. From this point on, however, I will have to be vague, as a major development of the first book becomes the basis for the plots of the second and third books.
There is something that felt very old-fashioned about this series, and after some thought I figured out why. One one level, this is a book about individuals. That sounds like a tautology, I know, but I realized that basically every character is someone with very close access to high political power. This is a novel about kings, about kingship, about what it means to rule, and to rule justly. There isn’t much interrogation of why the galaxy’s politics are the way they are; they are dominated by Empires, all with emperors (although one is an elective monarchy along the lines of Malaysia or the United Arab Emirates); the few scenes of crowds, tellingly, all revolve around imperial figures. This is a future that is dominated by absolute monarchy, a feudal future, a story that would feel not inappropriate on horseback and clutching a sword (indeed, one character clutches a sword and every time she does it is an amazing experience). TVTropes defined Space Opera as telling human-scale stories set among the vastness of space, and this series is a very good demonstration of that.
A large chunk of the plot is taken up by the aforementioned romance; that romance is perhaps the most quintessential human story scaled to the vastness of space. I am trying not to spoil too much, but it involves two people who are in the center of galactic politics. These are people who love each other, are infatuated with each other, but also for far too long cannot be together. This isn’t a hackneyed love-hate relationship as in the movies, but rather that they, as people, are very compatible, but they, as symbols of great powers, are completely incompatible. The trilogy is a story about how those in high politics, especially monarchies where their position is chosen by birth (it reminds me, at times, of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, which likewise talked about he was thrust into a position of great visibility at birth, and how stifling it felt). These two people yearn for each other as each other, not pawns in a great diplomatic game; they simply want to be people together. I found it very moving.
Another choice that Skrutskie made is one that I found to be very interesting: this galaxy is queernorm. Most relationships in this trilogy are same-sex, and the characters never view this as anything other than ordinary. At least some characters appear to be attracted to people regardless of gender entirely. The most plot-relevant example of this is a case of a potential arranged marriage that could change the face of galactic politics. It is a marriage proposed between two men, but the fact that it is between two men is not at all remarked upon. What is relevant is that it is an obvious imperial power play, of the type that aristocracies the world over have always done, but the actual fact of the genders involved is not considered to be relevant by anyone. It’s a striking juxtaposition, with fascinating implications for the nature of society in this setting, implying a form of kyriarchy that allowed for the dismantling of patriarchal gender norms without challenging at all the system of ‘bloodright’ (as they call it) that implies a feudal far future. A very relevant example: one of the empires is mentioned as being ruled by a nonbinary sovereign who uses they/them pronouns, and is referred to by the title ‘Emprex’ (a word that I find to have a nice crisp feel to it).
If you wanted to be overly cynical, you could call the grounding of the plot in characters who are indisputably elite to be reactionary; I would counter that this series, like Star Wars before it (and from which this series very clearly draws much from), is playing in the field of myth. The plot is, on some level, something from the dawn of time, and as George Lucas said, clichés become clichés because they work. The setting interacts with the character work to create this sensation of being larger than life. The central romance feels like an ancient pair of star-crossed lovers, and here Skrutskie makes that old saying far more literal than William Shakespeare could ever have imagined.
There’s a part of me that found bits of the worldbuilding unsatisfying, but that part of me is immediately answered by another part of me that thinks that Skrutskie left just the right gaps in the universe to get the imagination flowing. I’ve heard authors say that you have to leave those gaps if you want a community around your books, because those communities will want to produce fan fiction with those gaps. For example, I found it curious that Skrutskie never went into detail about the history, or even the justification, for the Bloodright system. On some level, this is the typical feudal future, but it also has relevance to character. You have multiple people on the high ranks of hierarchies spanning the galaxy. You get a sense of their characters, yes, but you never get a precise idea of how these people justify absolute monarchy in a galaxy with faster-than-light travel and no patriarchal structures of gender, and from there, justify themselves (I refer, once again, to K. S. Villoso’s great essay about how good worldbuilding and good characterization feed into each other). I felt that could have been cleared up a bit, even in passing, in the way that there is a throwaway line about the generation ships that spread humanity across the stars. There is a bit where characters wonder about the actual efficacy of absolute monarchy, but never how absolute monarchy is justified in this setting.
I fear that what I wrote above makes it sound like I was disappointed in this series. In some pedantic aspects, yes, but on the whole I absolutely loved it. Upon finishing this series, I immediately wanted a big-budget Hollywood adaptation (much as I did with Allen Steele’s V-S Day), whether as a film trilogy or as a big-budget TV series. It has everything! Romance! Adventure! Cool spaceships! Cool mech suits! Come on, Hollywood, you can do this! Woke is back! I also wanted to see this universe built upon, maybe with other authors (and with some look at the mass politics, too). As a space opera fan, I haven’t read something this purely fun in a long time.
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Reference:
Skrutskie, Emily. Bonds of Brass [Del Rey, 2020]
Skrutskie, Emily, Oaths of Legacy [Del Rey, 2021]
Skrutskie, Emily, Vows of Empire [Del Rey, 2022]
POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.