Book Review: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Hugo finalist sequel to the Hugo winning The Tainted Cup.

Readers of The Tainted Cup, now that we have gotten the meeting and setup out of the way, are plunged right into the action of A Drop of Corruption, second in the Ana and Din mysteries by Robert Jackson Bennett. The novel assumes you’ve read the first novel, and know the situation, and know we are going to go right into the action. Ana and Din are investigators for a fantasy Empire, looking into mysteries, particularly murders, that defy normal investigative techniques. It’s an Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe situation: Din does the legwork, while Ana, because of some double edged gifts, usually is never in the field and instead uses what Din (magically augmented to be able to remember anything he sees or hears) gathers to make the case.

 
If you are reading this review, and haven’t read The Tainted Cup, you might be ready to tackle this book with that precis but you will miss a lot of the nuance of the Empire and what it does, and not be quite ready for the further conversation here. There are many lines in this book, and one of them is one that should not be overlooked: a critique of the Empire and the Imperial Project.

 
That critique is a nuanced and interesting one that goes beyond the usual binaries of Chaos vs Absolute Law and Ana and Din, as representatives of the Empire in a important but still independent border Kingdom, do navigate. We saw in The Tainted Cup about the importance of the Empire and also the costs of that Empire as well. We still don’t quite know what the Leviathans really are. Here, in this book, we are in a place where the reagents and the remnants of defeated Leviathans are processed. Yarrow is an important kingdom because of what it can do for the Empire, but it is not yet within the orbit of the Empire. But it seems like it is a matter of time before it is.

And that is interesting because there are conversations about the idea of Imperial Expansion and the uses of Empire and the health of the Empire. Since I think about the Roman Empire everyday, there are two time frames here I am thinking of. First is the 2nd century AD, in the time of Trajan and Hadrian. Trajan conquers a bunch of Mesopotamia from the Persians, in what is now Iraq. However, upon his death, Hadrian begins a campaign of consolidation, giving up the new gains and fortifying the Empire as it is. This is of course where we get Hadrian’s Wall.¹ The point is that the Empire is at a limit...and that is a dangerous place for Empire to be. It’s dangerous for an Empire to further expand, something Ana talks to Din about as Din considers his own problems within the Empire. And it is dangerous for an Empire to remain in this position. That mirrors Din’s all problems again--as Ana’s hands, he is trapped in an old crushing debt, but getting out of that position is difficult. But remaining in that position is taxing. It’s a nice balance of the internal problems of the main character with the geopolitical position of the Empire he works for. What good is an Empire and is it all worth it?

The even stronger second Roman Empire parallel is the 130’s BC and the kingdom of Pergamon. Pergamon was a Greek Kingdom in what we now call Turkey. Attalus III, last king of the kingdom, had no direct heirs, and so bequeathed the kingdom to the then Roman Republic. This was something that seems to have been in the wind for years (much like in this book how the people of Yarrow know that the Empire is slowly closing its jaws around them to absorb them completely). The actual attempted transfer mirrors events in the book here, as a supposed brother challenges the transfer and violence erupts. Here, events diverge from the history, but the upset is that the transfer is much messier and more fraught than it might otherwise be, both for Yarrow and the Empire, and Pergamon and the Roman Republic.

Beyond all of this fascinating and crunchy worldbuilding, supported by the previous novel, there is of course a murder plot, and schemes and wheels within wheels. Now that we have the Ana and Din pattern established, the book can unleash us upon it. Din finds himself in some precarious positions and situations gathering data from Ana, ranging from a perilous trip up a canal in boats that reminded me personally of a visit to the Mekong Delta, to schemes and conflicts involving the Empire’s own bank, the workshop/magical foundry that Yarrow is famous for, and an opponent possessed of prescience. Said opponent has some of the classic uses of the form--false identities, faked deaths, body doubles and more. And the actual inciting incident is that classic trope--a locked room mystery.

Ana does find herself, as the jacket cover suggests, with an opponent that can predict her every move. How does one beat someone who can see so many moves ahead? Therein lies the story. It’s a fair bit of puzzling and it is our slow understanding (as it is for Ana and Din) of the culture and society of Yarrow that keeps our investigators on their toes.

The question of award eligibility comes to a head here. Should a book be award worthy if it does not stand on its own? A Drop of Corruption most definitely extends the world, builds out Ana and Din more, and provides a whole new set of secondary characters who are fascinating and interesting (and not just our antagonist, once revealed). Ana as always remains a strange and sometimes alien person, it is Din who goes out into the world and has to be, for lack of a better word, a people person. Not that, especially when it comes to sexual relations, that Din is at all a wilting flower in this regard. But for all of that, does this book stand on its own?

No. I don’t think its reasonable for a reader to pick up this book, without having picked up The Tainted Cup, and get the full experience of what Bennett is doing. If your standards for award nomination is “the book stands on its own”, then A Drop of Corruption, as strong as it is, and as vibrant the characters are, the worldbuilding and the writing, does not pass that test. There are some hints here and there of the past, but this book assumes the reader knows about Din’s secrets, his debt, and already know that Ana is more than she appears (something reinforced here, but you are clearly meant to continue in a vein already known).

As a book, however, if you do not want to follow the rule of a book standing on this own, I think myself that A Drop of Corruption is among the strongest of the finalists. It does what The Tainted Cup does, but without having to set up the story and the problem, can really focus on a problem, an area, and a situation and really go into deep depth in it. Bennett is one of the more interesting fantasy authors out there today, and A Drop of Corruption proves just why.

--

Highlights:

• Second Ana and Din mystery - does not stand on its own
• Interesting puzzles and an intriguing, frustrating antagonist.
• Deep worldbuilding, including crunchy thoughts on Empire

Reference: Bennett, Robert Jackson, A Drop of Corruption, (Del Rey 2025).

¹ A successor to Hadrian, Antonius Pius, tried to build a wall further north, in the area that is now Glasgow and Edinburgh. There are some remnants but that project was abandoned two decades after it was finished, and Hadrian’s Wall remained the furthest permanent projection of Roman power until the 5th century. There are some artifacts from the Antonine Wall fortlets in a museum in Glasgow.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

6 Books with Ale Presser and K.B. Spangler

There are two of us for this Six Books Interview!

Artist and co-creator Ale Presser is a very tired Brazilian mom who lives in Portugal with her husband and son. She lives and breathes comics. According to K.B., she’s a border collie who has to be working on comics every hour of the day or she’ll start to eat the couch.

Author and co-creator K.B. Spangler lives in North Carolina with her husband and two completely awful dogs. She never stops writing novels, comics, and short stories. To hear Ale tell it, if left unattended, she’ll wander off and start another major writing project.

1. What book are you currently reading?

To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose, sequel to To Shape a Dragon’s Breath. I’m about a hundred pages in, and it’s got the same tone and pacing as the first book, so I’m really enjoying it. It’s one of those stories that operates on multiple levels, which I adore: the first level are the obvious challenges of the indigenous main character who is forced to operate in a white-dominated society; the second level are all of these baby living fusion engines just running around being adorable, with all the subtle implications of what it might mean that dragons can change physical matter at the elemental level; the third level is the folklore surrounding dragons and how each extremely different society claims they were saved from catastrophic climate crisis through forging bonds with these creatures. Blackgoose is building to something and I’m eager to learn how these themes are resolved.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

This Machine Kills Billionaires by T.R. Napper. It’s a cyberpunk short story collection and Napper writes dark and hard, so basically it’ll be like consuming a little slice of fury whenever I’m in the mood for delicious hate cake.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to re-read?

I really love rereading The Scholomance Trilogy by Naomi Novik. It’s another one of those multiple-level stories where I find something new each time I read it. There are the monsters and the capitalism metaphor, of course, but on my last reread I realized that the man character mentions many times that the monsters will go after non-magical humans once they’ve eaten all of the tasty magic-enriched stuff. So if you extend the metaphor a little, nobody is safe from the harms caused by capitalism even if they can’t participate in it themselves. Plus you get phrases like “all the sense of an unvarnished deck chair” and, I mean, never. Not on my best day.

4. Is there a book that you love and wish that you yourself had written?

Watership Down, obvs.

5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that holds a special place in your heart?

Same answer. Those bunnies, man. How do you do that with bunnies? Fiver is constantly shivering in my head somewhere…you know, I should probably reread that book, too.

6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

Well! That would be SideQuested, the first collected graphic novel of our webcomic of the same name. Here’s the cover copy:

Magic makes the world go round, but no one in Charlie Goldskin’s world knows precisely where magic comes from. This isn’t Charlie’s problem. She’s the adopted daughter of a woodcarver and is training to be a librarian. It’ll be a quiet life, but that’s fine with Charlie, as magic is summoned through conflict and she would like to avoid that, thank you very much!

Then her birth father shows up to take her from her village and bring her to the king’s court.

Prince Leopold is gifted in the noble arts of diplomacy and combat, but he’s never met anyone like Charlie. Falling in love with her wouldn’t be an issue, except he’s already engaged, and his fiancée is the daughter of a very powerful evil witch. Charlie, panicking, decides to break the news to Princess Robin...but then she finds love at first sight, too. To resolve this love triangle, the teens are sent on a quest to discover the source of magic! So much for Charlie’s plans for a quiet life...

I’m the author, and Ale Presser is the artist. Actually she’s the primary creator: she tells me what she wants to see in the story, and I slam words and plots into place, and then she illustrates my scripts. Ale is very firm about what I can and cannot do—she won’t let me kill off anyone!—and we’re both heavily influenced by Ranma ½ and other slapstick anime romcoms, so the story is constantly full steam ahead and beware of random giant mallets. Also, magical cults seeking to steal your life’s essence for their own nefarious purposes.

But the real joy is in the characters and how they interact. For example, Princess Robin and her mother, the all-powerful witch-queen Boopsie, know each other so well that it’s a joy to write their interactions. And they’re both very clever people so they’re constantly pushing each other’s buttons. Stack these characters with Ale’s amazing and expressive art, and it’s a wildly fun ride!

Thank you! 

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Book Review: Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead

The latest novel by K.J. Parker set in his Parkerland ‘verse

K.J. Parker has settled into doing novels set in his Parkerland ‘verse. For lack of a better term for the setting, since it involves a variety of locations, timelines, characters, and inconsistencies, it is a medieval world that isn’t our own, but rhymes and plays with that rhyme in a whole bunch of different ways. Be it the Siege (Sixteen Ways to Defend a City) Trilogy about the not-quite-fall of Byzantium to Saevus Corax, battlefield salvager who winds up trying to head off international conflicts, to various novellas involving the ubiquitous Salonicus, who is a con artist, inventor, playwright, and possibly also the most brilliant person in the entire timeline. The novellas and novels aren’t in any sort of sensical order, the very idea of a map is scoffed at, and just when things actually took place is not clear.

Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead is the latest in these. This novel feels, from internal evidence, to be late in the timeline of events compared to the others. The church has been going along for quite a while and doesn’t have any competition anymore, and seems ready to have a schism of some size. The eternal threat of the Sashan Empire seems muted. Once again we have people lamenting lost manuscripts, writings and whole technologies.¹

And an impious monk and a female assassin/nun are dispatched to a synod where they have been tasked with killing a troublesome princess. But things get hot and hairy before they can even get there, and when they get to the synod itself, trouble erupts not of their own making, but definitely because they are there.

Despite the title, our viewpoint character is not the assassin/nun Sister Svangerd herself, but rather a more typical Parker point-of-view character: Brother Desiderius. He is a well worn and familiar archetype to readers of Parker’s work. A cynical, knowledgeable, brains-driven protagonist. He’s also an out-and-out atheist, even given that he’s a monk. He also has some other useful skills, and the classic Parker game of “I reveal this about the character and that changes what you just read” runs riot through his story. Sister Svangerd, for all that she is in the title, doesn’t hold a candle to our real protagonist, and that is a shame and a missed opportunity.

This novel’s theological debates about The Invincible Sun and the minutiae of its dogma are interesting if you want a debate over a religion in a fantasy novel. Parker, and to various extents his characters, are engaged with it. And there is a veneer of the idea that maybe there are supernatural forces using human agents here—or are the human agents simply thinking they are working for those supernatural elements—or is it all lies, delusions and half truths?

Take the Not-Quite-Dead from the title. Yes, this novel has a type of zombie in it. Or at least an undead. But there is a real fascination with Parker with the idea of people thinking they are supernatural, and regarding their presence as prima facie evidence for the truth of evil, versus the alternative. Our protagonist is from a country where this happens in families: naturally, there are families where, when people die, they come back as these undead. He’s an atheist and has a materialistic view of the entire affair, even if nearly nobody else does. It’s like this novel is having arguments with the more fantastical novellas such as Inside Man about whether the supernatural elements of Parkerland are actually real or not. Are they? Unclear!

And that is the thing about this novel, for better or worse. This novel is very much, absolutely meant as inside baseball catnip for people who have read a bunch of these novels and stories already and want to keep burrowing into this world and try to figure it out and see if there is a consistent design behind everything. Is there? Some days I think Parker is deliberately inconsistent just to mess with his longtime deep readers, and half the time I think he is just winging it and doesn’t have a consistent theory of worldbuilding. As I have read a number of books and reviewed them, here. Making History, for example, seems like a serious contemplation on the nature of history and its transmission. The Saevus Corax series, which this book resembles in some ways, does a lot of what this novel does, although with a somewhat different focus and at a different point in the timeline. I do think, especially given his academic focused stories, that it is all a game to Parker.

And that’s fine, but, and here’s the but. I might enjoy trying to figure out things here, trying to tease out where and when in Parkerland these events are happening and what it all means for the history and development of the world. I might enjoy the reading references, the aforementioned familiar archetype of a character. There is a well worn groove here in these novels.

The problem, the but, as it were, is that there is no way I would recommend this book to someone absolutely new to Parker. I am glad Parker is not writing solely for the inside baseball (the aforementioned Making History works pretty well for readers who haven’t read much or any of Parker). But a novel like this, although it is first in a series, really isn’t the first in a series at all. It’s a novel for a limited audience—deep fans of Parkerland.

I can hope, based on prior experience, that the next two novels will tie things together and get me to reconsider this novel and its merits. But then again, that’s once again something for the deep Parkerland reader, not for the casual fantasy reader picking up Parker for the first time. And so we come back to the original problem.

So in a real way what this review boils down to is: If you like and read lots of Parkerland novels, you get more of the same here. Other readers probably won’t derive as much enjoyment out of the novel as you’d hope. I think it’s not worth your time, frankly. I enjoy Parker’s tone and world, and his knowledgable protagonist, but this is down deep in that, and starting here won’t land well at all. There are better places to start, I think (e.g. Sixteen Ways to Defend a City).

Highlights:

• A novel set late in the Parkerland timeline
• A familiar protagonist despite the book title
• Too well worn a groove for a limited audience

Reference: Parker, K.J. Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead [Orbit, 2026].

¹ Inside baseball here. One of the things that make it hard to date and come up with a chronology of the Parkerland ‘verse is that technology and knowledge keeps getting lost. This world seems to be continually in a trap where no sustained technological development can take place without a war or other disaster knocking the sandcastle down all over again and regressing to an equilibrium. Even for a world with multiple organizations trying to preserve and extend knowledge, in Parkerland, it never *lasts*.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Book Review: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

Ilona Andrews expands their fantasy and romance talents into the burgeoning realm of isekai in English

Isekai. Portal fiction. The very Japanese origin of the word suggests it is relatively new, even exotic, but it is a tradition that taps into a small but active stream in English SFF while using the enthusiasm of its Japanese taproot for basic concepts. Ilona Andrews’s This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is the latest iteration of isekai fiction in a mainstream English language format.

Online encyclopedias define isekai as a genre of Japanese manga, anime, light novel, video game, etc. It has characters who go into a different world. But that’s not quite right, since you might be thinking: What’s the difference between isekai and portal fantasy? Portal fantasy does all of that too. One can think of portal fantasy as a bigger umbrella category than isekai. Portal fantasy covers any time characters go from one universe to another, usually from our world to a fantasy-based world.¹ Examples are numerous, and the concept goes back at least to the pulp era of science fiction.

Isekai is a more specific form of portal fantasy. There are some strains and varieties, but the main thrust is that the protagonist is transported to another world. Sometimes they have to die in order to get resurrected into this new world.² A lot of the time, unlike some portal fantasy, they wind up getting powers and abilities, even godlike ones, by the act of transferring across to the new world.³

Some isekai have an explicitly roleplaying element to them. The protagonist finds themself inside of a roleplaying game, or a piece of fiction, sometimes one that they know quite well.⁴ This knowledge can itself be a superpower, but the thrust is, the character has been transported into a new world that can run on rules that can be manipulated.⁵ There are even subsets of this where the protagonist finds themself in the role of a specific character from the book/property whose world they are now in. There is a sub-sub-genre of this where the protagonist finds themself specifically in the body of a villain… a villainess in fact, and has to figure out how to avoid the sticky end that inevitably awaits them.⁶

So let’s get to This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and see how this fits into isekai. Our protagonist is Maggie. Maggie has fallen into the world of her favorite fantasy series, one that has never been finished. She is in the city of Kair Toren, and she knows the plot of the two books by heart. She is immersed fully in the world of the books. The problem is, she is absolutely penniless. She is not in the body of a villainess or anyone else, and she knows that the world is in for a rough time. And so she decides that, in addition to survival, her goal is to stop the tragedy that the book unfolds.

Maggie does have a superpower, one that she does not expect. She dies early in the book… and then she is resurrected. This is not like Django Wexler’s How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying. The world itself does not reset; the world keeps going on, and the resurrections are painful and take time. Maggie herself thinks about the gruesomeness of this, and whether she could come back from, for example, being torn to pieces. So she uses her extensive knowledge of the books and tries to bootstrap herself out of poverty and try to derail the beginnings of the plots that will consume Kair Toren in fire and blood. Along the way she makes some friends and gets wrapped up in intrigue and adventure. She also discovers a secondary superpower that is subtle but important: although she has read the book many times, she discovers that she can quote from the book, chapter and verse as it were. It gives an interesting metatextual twist to things. It also means that at points she doesn’t know some facts, because even the braided multiple POVs of the book don’t cover everything, so she is forced to guess and deduce some things about the plot and people around her because they were not in the book.⁷ As far as telling her companions what she is, she does not tell anyone that she is from the world outside the story. She is genre-aware enough to realize the problems of that. As it is, her ability as a seer means she has to try and keep her head down to avoid entities who might want to grab her for information.

And then there is the romance. This is an Ilona Andrews novel, and romance is a common subgenre in the novels they write. So there is no surprise that Unresolved Sexual Tension is shot through the book, especially when Maggie realizes that one of her companions and friends is not who she thought they were, and is instead someone far more dangerous and compelling. Given that the character in question is, according to the book, destined to marry someone else, this provides narrative tension as well.

And that is the real heart of this book and what it tries to do, and what it is in the isekai subgenre. Maggie knows the book by heart and even better than she should given that secondary superpower. What she finds is a conservation of narrative working against her. She does indeed try to stop the tragic events of the book, including even the “pebble” that rolls downhill to start the avalanche of war and rebellion and conflict, but at every turn, the narrative tries to assert itself and put the story “back on track” despite her efforts. It’s a fascinating use of metatext here, as Maggie tries to defy what happens in the books, only to be resisted and have to find a different approach or fight a new problem.

The story ends on a cliffhanger, with a situation seemingly resolved, but then, out of nowhere, the problem arises anew and puts our protagonist in peril. But that, too, is a narrative convention (and our protagonist knows it), which suggests to me that she is still trapped in a narrative structure that keeps wanting to assert itself despite her efforts. So this is not a novel that is going to satisfy if you are looking for the one-and-done approach. Instead, we have a series, and we still have a whole set of unresolved mysteries, and of course, peril for the protagonist. The novel stays entirely in Maggie’s point of view, which is an interesting commentary and choice given that she is in a world of multiple POV epic fantasy. I like that tension for the reader, and wonder if she will keep up that for the inevitable sequel.

Highlights:

• Isekai, in a English language SFF mode.
• Yes, this is a kissing book. Or at least slow-burn would-be kissing.
• Interesting metatextual elements.

Reference: Andrews, Ilona. This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me [Tor, 2026].

¹ A notable exception to this is Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Out of This World and sequels, where there is portal travel from our world to a fantasy world, *and* to a space opera world. The space opera world may have a touch of science fantasy to it since it's not a rigorous “the net is up” sort of hard SF universe.

² That bit doesn’t seem to yet be popular in mainstream English versions of Isekai. However, the far out of print Through the Ice by Piers Anthony and Robert Kornwise (1992) does use this, having its young protagonist fall through ice and then get resurrected into a fantasy world. I thought it very strange at the time I read it, not knowing at all of isekai in any form. But in Japanese isekai, it would be bog-standard. Did Kornwise and Anthony read isekai at that point, or invent it independently?

³ The first time I came across that in mainstream English form was Dave Duncan’s The Great Game series, which explicitly has as its worldbuilding that if you transfer to another realm, you basically have it in you to be a god in that realm. The protagonist goes from 1914 England to a realm where he has the potential to gain prodigious power… but the gods already there have very mixed ideas about someone else joining their pantheon (especially the God of Death). The author’s foreword, 10 years after the fact, doesn’t mention isekai as an inspiration at all. But, again, by Japanese framing, bog-standard isekai.

⁴ And showing that this is old in English language SFF, I present to you The Incompleat Enchanter ‘verse of Fletcher Pratt and L Sprague de Camp. Harold Shea and his friends find that portal magic, and magic in general, is based on verse, and they wind up in a variety of worlds that they know—Norse myth, the Roland cycle, The Faerie Queene and other worlds that they recognize. There is even some directed targeting at one point, seeking a world with a magician powerful enough to handle a problem, and picking it based on their reading. Also a bit of Duncan here, as, except for portal magic, the protagonists seem unable to do spells with verse in our world… but in other worlds, they are indeed magicians with verse.

⁵ LitRPG enters the chat at this point, as well as its outgrowths and parallels. Being thrust into the world of a game is much older than that in mainstream English SFF, however. One can look to the 1980s and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, which runs on this premise. Or Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame novels, which have the characters transported into an RPG world. Although it is not a videogame, Django Wexler’s How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying has a protagonist who was brought across, portal fantasy style, but every time she dies, the world resets. Wexler is extensively deep into anime and manga, as seen in other books of his, and he is definitely channeling isekai tropes throughout.

⁶ And this is where Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil comes into the chat, because it runs right on this chassis in a mainstream English language form. Main character Rae is dying and makes a magical bargain… and winds up in the world of the books… but she is not the superfan; her sister is. So she doesn’t know everything, but she does know that she is Lady Rahela, and that in that role, she is due to die the next day.

⁷ And what of the book and its actual world? As revealed by Maggie and what we see, Kair Toren is a high-magic epic fantasy world with lots of intrigue, and yes, lots of blood. Think Martin’s Westeros or Elliott’s Wendar, but with the magic turned on to high. The two fictional novels have lots of PoV characters, extensive worldbuilding and backstory, and are exactly the kind of thick doorstoppers that someone could read and reread extensively and obsessively.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Book Review: The Final Chronicle of Yeneh by Jo Miles

A potent anti-colonialist novel that sets its stakes on not just the fate of a planet and a species, but more importantly, the heart and soul of its main character

Ada Quintrall is the heiress to the Dukedom of Corbridge. Her grandfather the Duke has managed the aforementioned dukedom, which is actually on the planet Corbridge, in a future where humans have gone to the stars. The terraforming of the planet has been a harsh affair, and the native life has resisted. But when Ada finds out the long connection between her family and that native life, she is forced to confront what her grandfather and her family have done, and her complicity in it. And what is to be done about it.

This is the story of The Final Chronicle of Yeneh by Jo Miles.

The Final Chronicle of Yeneh plays with a number of genres in order to explore its overall themes, which are, unapologetically, anti-imperial, anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian in nature. Let’s begin with the most unexpected, and that is portal fantasy. In the story of The Final Chronicle of Yeneh, Ada learns that her ancestor wrote a bestselling fantasy series (The Chronicles of Yeneh, hence the book title). As the novel proceeds in its opening phases, Ada realizes that the native inhabitants of the planet are not mindless “plants,” but rather are the fantasy species from her ancestor’s book. Just how and why this is true, and what it means, puts a portal fantasy frame front and center in the book.

As this is a science fiction novel, the nature of the world, combined with the portal fantasy already alluded to, gives the setting and the story a significant layer of science fantasy. It retains this even as the novel progresses; the novel isn’t as interested in hard SF as it is in the sociological, political and personal stories. You don’t get any sense of what the interstellar drive is or how it works, for example. That’s not the kind of novel this is.

And then we get into the worldbuilding and some more genre-bending. In this future, a portion of a diasporic humanity has decided to reinstitute aristocracy as a social system. It is explained that in a world where some people turn away from merciless post-Capitalism, the appeal of personal rule by means of hereditary aristocracy for some planets was strong. It’s not a new idea¹ to have an aristocratic “feudal” future.² Miles, however, does it a bit differently. Aristocratic nobles like Ada’s family are not the only social system out there; it’s made clear that there are still capitalistic systems, and aristocratic ones, and even socialistic ones. There is a plurality of social systems in Miles’ universe, and while we are under an aristocratic one in this book, a main character, Zamora, is from Luna, which is mainly a socialist state, This does set up some cultural distrust at first between Ada (as an aristocratic heiress) and Zamora, and in general between Zamora and the population of Corbridge.

And then there is the straight-up science fiction as a genre. Ada (and Zamora) understand that the natives of the planet are more than just “plants” (as Zamora already argued); moreover, there is an entire civilization in the toxic and dangerous zones beyond what has been colonized and terraformed by the humans. So we switch up into the novel’s anti-colonial, anti-imperial and pro-ecological themes. With the previous layers to this, this makes The Final Chronicle of Yeneh a science fiction novel with interesting and intriguing underpinnings, providing a fresh story in the process.³

But beyond all that genre-mixing and worldbuilding, this is a very personal story, focused on Ada, who as heiress to her grandfather, is confronted with the ecological, sociological and personal costs of imperialism, colonialism and the rapacious nature of her family and her family’s legacy. It’s a painful story for her in some ways, especially as it puts her on the other side of her grandfather and her legacy once she completely learns those costs and takes a stand. The novel is about those costs, and the difficulty of that change. And as importantly as coming to terms with that legacy, the novel is about taking action, making recompense and taking active steps to do better.

Yes, while Ada herself is in a position of privilege (at least at the outset), the novel’s message is that people can and do make a difference—and indeed must do so in order to effect change. Change is hard and is scary, but it is possible, with action. That is a message that the novel hits home, and it is a very necessary message in this day and age.

In sum, what The Final Chronicle of Yeneh does, brilliantly, is to channel Miles’ excellence in character depth and make the very soul of the main character, Ada, to be as important as the fate of the native Yeheneh and of the planet Corbridge. It stirs a swirl of portal fantasy and a hint of science fantasy into a far-future story that examines and criticizes colonialism, imperialism and exploitative social systems. Miles’ focus remains tight and sympathetic, having us join Ada on her own journey to recognizing, confronting and acting on working on systemic problems on Corbridge and beyond.

Highlights:

• Strong character focus and background
• Interesting space future sketched in and intriguing
• Bold anti-colonial, anti-imperial message, told well

Reference: Miles, Jo. The Final Chronicle of Yeneh [Horned Lark Press, 2026].

¹ Melinda Snodgrass’s Imperials Saga has capitalism evolve into a Spanish-focused monarchy and aristocracy, in space. And of course, there is always The Mote In God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle.

² Obligatory note that feudalism, as you might think of it, really didn’t exist as you might think of it. The huge variety of local political systems in Western Europe really put paid to that notion. Read the works of David Perry and Matthew Gabriele, among others, to learn more. (e.g. The Bright Ages).

³ The worldbuilding about the local inhabitants of the planet has resonances to many previous works of science fiction. You can certainly look at The Word for the World is Forest by Ursula K LeGuin. I also see touchstones to the work of Adrian Tchaikovsky and James Cameron’s Avatar universe.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Book Review: Breath and Bone by K. V. Johansen

Johansen’s penchant for epic fantasy distilled instead into a twisty sword and sorcery tale

Cover art by Laura Galli

It starts off simply, or seems to. Arrany, a young woman, is trying to get her twin brother free of the possessive control of a witch. She travels far to find a pair of godlings that have the power to free him. Or at least kill the witch. But the godlings are not who they appear to be, and neither is Arrany. And neither is the witch. What seems to be a simple quest across the landscape turns out to be a much more complicated affair than anyone anticipated.

Thus begins Johansen’s standalone sword and sorcery novel Breath and Bone.

In this review I want to discuss the form and nature of the book, its characters and its world more than a recitation of the plot points. And also posit an idea of theorycraft for genre.

Johansen has written a number of fantasies on a variety of levels, but is probably best known for her epic fantasy series The Caravan Road (starting with The Blackdog and ending with The Last Road). She has written a number of fantasies for children as well. But sword and sorcery is a stratum that she has not written to before. In her interview for this blog, she mentions that:

“… the plot of Breath and Bone just flowed out once Pony started talking, becoming a fresh adventure rooted in things she and Hedge thought long in the past. She’s old and wise and sometimes snarky, a bit of a trickster, not entirely reliable, a musician, a storyteller, a shapeshifter, and has a dark, damaged streak through her heart that breaks out from time to time. She and Hedge are both carrying a lot of scars, emotionally and psychologically, from the days of the empire. Their past, if you like, was epic fantasy—wars and politics, gods and horrors, victory achieved at great cost. Sword and sorcery is their retirement. They’re figures of legend in their world. People don’t expect to find them living in a cottage keeping ducks, with a sword buried under the floor.”

And I do like this idea and want to explore it further. Pony and Hedge have DONE the epic fantasy thing, and Breath and Bone makes lots of deep references, allusions and connections to their past. In many ways, this novel is their past coming to impinge on their present. Their present was a quiet one, living in “retirement,” with the boundaries of their life much smaller. And the novel supports this by Arrany’s journey and the initial steps of their adventure to free her brother to be entirely within the sword and sorcery mold. It’s a low stakes and seemingly straightforward story.

It doesn’t quite stay that way, but it puts me in the mind of a D&D campaign starting at level 1. Low-level D&D characters are basically in a sword and sorcery story. They don’t have control of epic powers as yet (or if they are associated with one, they can’t handle it). Their foes are low level. The stakes are low. There is a wider, wilder world out there that the PCs will get connected to, one way or another, over time, but they start small. Over time, as characters rise in level, the GM provides larger and more world-spanning challenges and opportunities. Player characters’ abilities rise. Clerics can raise the dead. Wizards can cast fireballs, and then things like plane shift. Rogues and fighters grow epic in their combat abilities. In other words, the campaigns shift from sword and sorcery to epic.

So there can be a progression in fantasy characters, going from the sword and sorcery of a low-stakes and small adventure, all the way up to epic conflicts and grand fates. You don’t have to have this progression; you can dunk characters into the deep end, but generally the inciting incident or two can be of small enough stakes to feel like one is touching the base of sword and sorcery before launching toward more epic realms. The Wheel of Time television adaptation shows this tactic in particular.

In Breath and Bone, we have two characters, Hedge and Pony, who have gone all the way to the epic phase and to the other side, to retirement. They became movers and shakers, capable and willing to topple an emperor and his empire. They have left legacies and legends and their names across the landscape. But now they are retired, living in the aftermath, in a cottage in a nowhere village keeping waterfowl.

The call to adventure in Breath and Bone for Hedge and Pony, as they get wrapped up in Arrany’s plight, is like a “second childhood” for them. Although they have done the epic thing, the initial steps are pure sword and sorcery, low stakes. They meet bandits. They run into a stray old god. Arrany gets kidnapped, and her story begins to unravel as we find out there is much more she did not say, and that matters are larger than Hedge and Pony realized. The scope widens as this rebalancing of the narrative continues, as we reach the lair of the witch. It’s a slow and gradual widening, and the true abilities and powers of Hedge and Pony become terrifyingly clear.

I’ve seen the rise to epic power many times before, but this “second childhood” of retired heroes slowly getting back into it by means of a return to epic fantasy via sword and sorcery is somewhat less common in fantasy. There have been a spate of retired hero books, but generally, given how much fantasy as a genre is a “young person’s game,” having a retired hero return to the fold happens, but less commonly than you’d think.¹ So in Breath and Bone, the shape of a graph of time and stakes and scale proves to be a curve with two humps, with the first hump in the past, but as the story progresses in the new storyline, we get a new rise.

The backstory is key to all this. At first it seems like a simple story: Arrany is trying to rescue her twin brother from a witch, so she seeks out a legendary hero to help. But what the story slowly reveals is that “first hump” and just how dangerous Hedge and Pony were as renowned movers and shakers. We slowly learn just what deeds they are responsible for, and as the novel progresses, I felt trepidation that Arrany had awakened from retirement two very powerful individuals… and worse, has not been entirely truthful with them. Arrany asks two retired and extremely dangerous individuals on a seemingly simple quest but withholds key knowledge about herself and what is really going on. It’s a logline that is ripe for drama, action and adventure as we head across the landscape.

And the landscape supports this sword and sorcery narrative. Arrany travels across relatively mundane locations to reach Hedge and Pony, and as they travel toward the witch, their surroundings become somewhat more fantastic, particularly the inhabitants. By the time we get to the glaciated area of Under Ice, we have definitely abandoned the quiet and peaceful cottage for a wilder and more dangerous place. All through it, the lush landforms are wonderfully described. If the Caravan Road was based on the Silk Road, from the Caucasus all the way to China, this is much more of a glaciated Western Europe, with fells, lakes, swamps, mountains and eventually the border of the Ice.² Landscapes are important to sword and sorcery. Even if the range of possible locations is massive, from teeming cities to bloody frontiers, a sword and story story must give the reader a good sense of the landscape to be effective. Breath and Bone succeeds on this level. This world feels a bit like her epic fantasy The Wolf and the Wild King (with a sequel forthcoming), with the cold landscape and a huge lake as a central figure that a bunch of the action occurs in and around. But in all cases, the landscape continually invites the reader to step into it and imagine what the characters will run into around the bend.

The novel is a one and done, completing the story in one volume (a relatively compact book by Johansen’s standards but more in keeping with a sword and sorcery length). In the course of this book, Johansen unfolds a world, a set of characters, and a set of premises that invite the reader’s imagination. And, perhaps, it will spark the author to write more in this ‘verse. Find out more about Breath and Bone in the interview I did with Johansen here at Nerds of a Feather.

Highlights:

• Sword and sorcery from an epic fantasy writer
• Excellent characters
• A world that invites going around the next corner

Reference: Johansen, K.V. Breath and Bone [Candlemark and Gleam, 2026].

¹ The reference and tie-in I want to go with here is Alex Marshall’s A Crown for Cold Silver. The inciting incident is that a military force decides to decimate a small town. It just so happens that this town is the retirement home of general Cobalt Zosia. Zosia does not take this well, not well at all, and goes on a carefully constructed campaign of revenge and retribution. It is suggested at points that the attacking force was directed to make an example of Zosia’s village by someone who knew she was there, and how she would respond. Zosia had already had her epic adventure and was in retirement. She gets pulled out of that retirement and ramps up her revenge, and by books two and three in the series, we are firmly in epic fantasy territory once more.

² Sort of like a Western European answer to Michael Scott Rohan’s The Winter of the World. Also, the Doggerland books of Stephen Baxter, or the colder world of Kate Elliott’s Cold Magic series.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

Six Books with Jeremy Szal

Jeremy Szal was born in 1995 and was raised by wild dingoes, which should explain a lot. He writes epic fantasy and dark space opera of a character-driven, morally grey nature. His main series is the Common trilogy from Gollancz/Hachette, which includes Stormblood, Blindspace, and Wolfskin, about a drug harvested from alien DNA that makes users permanently addicted to adrenaline and aggression. He’s the author of over fifty short stories, translated into fifteen languages, many of which appear in his short fiction collection Broken Stars. He was the editor for the Hugo-winning StarShipSofa until 2020 and has a BA in Film Studies and Creative Writing from UNSW. He carves out a living in Sydney, Australia with his family, where he loves watching weird movies, eating Japanese food, exploring cities, learning languages, cold weather and dark humour. Find him at https://jeremyszal.substack.com/ or @JeremySzal

Today he tells us about his Six Books.

1. What book are you currently reading?

I'm currently reading The Strength of the Few by James Islington (a fellow Aussie!). It's engrossing, dark, twisty, and deeply intricate. I know that the puzzle pieces will inevitably fall into place soon, and now I'm just along for the ride, waiting for the penny to drop, while dreading what is coming.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

Red God by Pierce Brown. I first discovered Red Rising when I was still a teenager, back in 2015. I don't want the story to end, but end it must, as all stories do.

3. Is there a book you're currently itching to reread?

Not a book, but the manga series Beastars by Paru Itagaki. I discovered the series just before COVID hit, and so many rainy weekends were spent cooped up on the couch, exploring this world of animal protagonists. The writing is rough around the edges, but the characters and story are so well executed, and the art is truly spectacular. I'd read the whole series again just for the artwork. Maybe I will.

4. How about a book you've changed your mind about—either positively or negatively?

I usually wouldn't do this, because I try to never speak ill of my literary brothers and sisters, or their books, but I've spoken with the author about this, so I'll make an exception: Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio. When I first read it, I thought it long-winded, melodramatic, dull and too stuffy and full of purple prose for its own good. And make no mistake, the book is rough, as all debut novels are, including my own. But I heard that the series got better with each installment, so I gave Empire another read. I learned to appreciate the voice and style, found solace in the flowery language that helped to build this great galactic world brick by brick. The third novel, Demon in White, almost had me light-headed with just how epic and awesome it all was towards the end. If I allowed my hasty first impression to get in the way, I'd have deprived myself of one of the best SF epics in modern publishing.

5. What's one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

Red Rising by Pierce Brown. The entire series has been a part of my life for a long time, and has shaped me and my writing in a multitude of ways—something about a lonely, broken man, desperately seeking friendship and a home and a place where he belongs, resonated so strongly with me in my late teens, when I was seeing the end of university approaching and knew that I'd soon be ejected out into a new world to fend for myself. Although the world is one of limitless horrors and violence, it is also one of nobility and bravery, interspersed with epic and traumatic moments. I care deeply for Darrow and his cast of feral characters, and I know that I'll always have a home with them, whenever I flip open the pages again.

6. And speaking of that, what's *your* latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book is Wolfskin! It's the third book in the Common series, where the DNA of an extinct alien race is turned into a drug, making users permanently addicted to adrenaline and violence. The story is centred on Vakov Fukasawa, the protagonist, and his younger brother Artyom, as they're embroiled on opposite sides of a conflict that starts off as a drug war, and escalates into a grand galactic war, where the Shenoi—the source of the stormtech—prove to be not quite as extinct as everyone believed.

Wolfskin is awesome (although I could be biased) because I've finally been able to explore a bunch of the themes and plotlines that have been gathering speed since the first book. Vakov and Artyom have (mostly) healed their relationship and are now locked in and fighting side by side against the enemies that want to see them both dead. There's no secret as to who they are fighting—the Shenoi are not friendly, and here we get to see them in their full, grotesque, gory glory. And I think Wolfskin is the book where all the characters step up and truly set out on their own path, reach their full potential. It has always been my dream to write a fully-fleshed out space opera, on a scale similar to that of Star Wars, with tons of factions and aliens and ships and superweapons, and in Wolfskin I was given the chance to do just that.

Of course, I've also tried my damnest to keep things centred on character as well, where Vakov and his relationship—both with his friends, family, and his own body, take centre stage, and I think I've achieved that. I had to make some hard decisions in this installment, with how each character would end up, but I do think that I've ended it the way it demanded to be ended. The way it needed to be.

And now, I'm just extremely happy for it to soon be out in the world.

Thank you, Jeremy!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

6 Books with R.J. Barker

R.J. Barker is a critically acclaimed and award-winning author of fantasy fiction. He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel for his fourth novel, The Bone Ships, and his debut trilogy The Wounded Kingdom was nominated for the David Gemmel Award, the Kitschie Golden Tentacle, the Compton Crook, and the BFS Best Debut and Best Novel awards. R.J. lives in Leeds with his wife, son, and a collection of questionable taxidermy, odd art, scary music, and more books than they have room for.

Today he tells us about his six books:

1. What book are you currently reading?

I am currently reading Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is the fourth if his ‘Children of…’ books. I am quite a slow reader now so I am not a long way into it but it is just wonderful so far. I think Adrian is probably one of the best writers working in SFF right now. The breadth of his imagination is extraordinary, as is how quickly he manages to work which should probably be illegal (I have tried writing to my local Member of Parliament about this but they were strangely uninterested.) I love the way that he makes everything interlock and how work often calls back on itself and the depth of his creations is just wonderful. You can tell he’s done the work, which is always quite impressive to me as I try to do very little work.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

This was a really hard question for me as I am a very live in the moment person I don’t tend to be thinking about what’s coming or what has gone by much. I’m always too busy enjoying what I am doing now and writing is such a precarious occupation I think it’s often best not to think too much about the future. So I don’t. However, because of this question I found out that James Lee Burke released a new Dave Robicheaux book on the 12^th of February so now I know about that I am looking forward to it immensely. His writing is absolutely beautiful and the way he balances a sense of  impending violence and (often but not always) very subtle supernatural themes with the nature and environment of the deep south is incredible. The book is called The Hadacol Boogie. I have no idea what a Hadacol is but I am looking forward to finding out.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to re-read?

Not really. Life is way too short to re-read things (with one exception but we’ll get to that below) and I’m always in search of something new. I don’t really like nostalgia and I think, for me anyway, every type of art I’ve consumed has its enjoyment tied to a place and a situation that I can never go back to. And wouldn’t want to really, so often going back to things I’ve loved is just an exercise in disappointment. I will never reclaim the sense of awe in the new I had when I first read Iain M Banks Culture books. Or find again the joy of C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine cycle revealing to me what was really going on. So instead I want to find new things that will wow me in new ways.

4. A book that you love and wish that you yourself had written.

There are so many but RECENTLY that is Pagans by James Alastair Henry. It’s a police procedural set in a modern day England where Christianity never happened in the same way it did in ours. (I don’t think it’s ever underlined why but it doesn’t seem the Roman Empire never happened either). It’s an incredible book, not just because I love a crime novel, but the world just works. It’s a great bit of creation and feels entirely possible. The UK is very much a backwater, America never existed, and Africa and the Mughal empire of India are the main superpowers. There’s never a moment in the book where it doesn’t feel real.

But, bit of bad news if you are in the US, I don’t think you can get Pagans yet and you are really missing out. Sorry.

5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

Watership Down. I think some aspect of Watership Down is in everything I write and it remains the only book that I go back to and each time I find something new. Richard Adams was quite dismissive about the book, and thought it was for children but I think that just shows the author never quite knows what they are writing. On one level it is just an adventure with some rabbits for kids. But it’s also a deep and complex political allegory and a book full of lessons on how we treat each other. It’s just a wonderful thing and I love it dearly.

 6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book is Mortedant’s Peril and it comes out in May of this year. It’s always hard as Brit when someone says ‘what makes this thing you did Brilliant.’ As you’re kind of first instinct is to go, 'well, it’s alright' then deflect off as we don’t do self congratulation particularly well. Having said that, I think people will love Irody and his friends. Even though Irody at first approach is not that loveable, I think readers will see past his mask to what’s within. Then there’s the world, I’ve created quite a few worlds and they are often hard to approach, and require a lot of patience in the reader where this isn’t that. The world has all the complexity I enjoy giving a place but you can more or less step straight in to Elbay. It’s a city and we understand cities, even if it is one like no other you’ve ever come across. There’s also no build up, the danger (or peril!), is there right from the start, you’re thrown right in to the murder mystery that puts Irody’s life in danger..

And it’s funny. Not in a jokes way, but in the way people are, when they hide from themselves or don’t see the truth that you, the reader, can see from your lofty position above the page. It’s just all something very enjoyable, I loved writing it, and I hope you will love reading it.

Thank you, R.J!

--

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Review: The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen

The Photonic Effect wears its twin inspirations on its sleeve, and boldly launches Chen’s work into the subgenre of space opera and makes it so.

These are the voyages of the GCF Horizon. Its mission was to establish and map a new trade route for the Cluster. Instead, it spent ten years in a gravity well with a host of other trapped ships. Upon escape and return to Cluster space, they had found that in the decade since, a civil war had broken out. Now, with the experimental photonic drive that allowed them to escape the gravity well, the Horizon is seen as a tool, or a weapon, by both sides. And it turns out they have unfinished business with the Lumersians in the gravity well. Although the costs of pursuing that might be high indeed for the crew, and perhaps far beyond, as well.

This is the story of Mike Chen’s turn into space opera, The Photonic Effect.

Star Trek, in several of its incarnations, particularly TNG and Voyager are two of the clear antecedents and inspirations for Chen’s Horizon. This is in terms of the ship, the multi-species nature of the crew, the Federation-like Cluster. In terms of characters, our focus is primarily on the bridge and engineer crew of the Horizon, just like a typical Star Trek episode or series. Our Captain, Demora Kim, even has a Star Trek catchphrase, “Take us there.” Like any Star Trek series, we have a multi-species crew. In addition to the humans, including a human from another universe (thanks to that gravity well), the Horizon also has a Dwyen, a humanoid species with a pack-based hierarchical structure and outlook. And then there is Chuck… who is rather unusual and not really an active member of the crew at present, although he was crucial to the Horizon’s return to normal space. Given that Chen has written a DS9 comic, it’s clear and easy to see how he is channeling Star Trek into his unique world.

The other inspiration is a somewhat more complicated and in some aspects, darker one to draw from on occasion. And that would be the videogame series Mass Effect. Mass Effect, for those who have never played the games, takes place in a galaxy where humans are the new kids on the block and eager to prove themselves. The game can turn dark and complicated, with various forces and factions striving in a cutthroat galaxy, including secret factions and powers that the player character is engaged with. And to be truthful, the Horizon does feel much more like the Normandy from Mass Effect than most of the mainline Star Trek series central ships, except maybe Voyager. The ship is not all that large, and it is not even built well for war,¹ which makes people coveting it all the more perilous for the crew of the Horizon. They cannot shoot their way out of situations, even if they would consider doing so.

With these two powerful influences, Chen has the tools to tell his own tale and develop his own story and ’verse. Chen relies on a core set of characters and is interested in telling a story of how this flawed found family has to deal with the challenges of return, their own limitations, flaws and failures, and how to forge and come together to face threats. From Kim on down, we get a set of complicated and multi-sided characters much more DS9 in some ways in terms of characters than other Star Trek characters. Or, again, see Mass Effect. The fail points and weaknesses of the characters make each of them real, and engaging to read and follow.

Chen keeps his points of view on three characters:

Kim, the Captain, as our primary character, and the framing device at the front tells us this is her retirement interview and debriefing of her last mission. Kim went through a lot to try and get crew back home, and paid a price herself in seemingly losing her chance at romance with the aforementioned Chuck. Kim is interestingly flawed, often caught in bad decisions or situations, and has to strive to regain her crew’s trust, and to do better.

Another primary point of view is Tanav. Tanav isn’t part of the crew, not exactly; he’s an entertainer from another universe whose ship got caught in the gravity well. Circumstances forced him, along with other ships, to get on board the Horizon. He’s not crew, but he acts in a capacity of an entertainer. Tanav is conflicted—he misses his home universe, although his relation with his parents was rather complicated. And in a ship full of officers and engineers, he does wind up being a bit of an odd man out. Tanav’s story is one of growth in the face of conflict and fire, and it shows you don’t have to be the Captain or Chief Engineer to be a hero.

Third, Neera is the Chief Engineer on board the Horizon, and is the aforementioned Dwyen, which allows Chen to play with humanoid but not quite human. Chen does a great job not only in appearances, but going further and giving Neera a distinctive verbal cadence. I will bet that when I listen to the audiobook, I will be able to tell when Neera is speaking by the way she constructs her sentences, distinctive from all others. Like Kim, she’s imperfect, and her choices in trying to get the photonic drive to work wind up with major consequences for everyone.

The whole situation, seen in flashback and recollection, of that last mission that had the Horizon in the gravity well for ten years is an excellent bit of writing, dribbling out details from their ordeal and how they had to make sacrifices and paid costs in order to stay alive. In this way, it feels a lot more like a darker Voyager and much more into Mass Effect territory in that regard. And all that provides backstory and ballast to the core crew of the Horizon, including the characters who don’t get viewpoints.²

Chen has two crucial characters who are not from the original mission, and since they don’t have the ballast of the backstory of having gone to the well and having that connection to the crew, or to the world, they don’t come off quite as well. Commander Matthews, foisted onto the Horizon upon their return to the Cluster, definitely has an agenda of his own, and his antagonistic relationship with the crew provides much tension. He’s a more classic sort of square-jawed hero, and one, in roleplaying terms, that has gone on the heavy side of combat and physical skills that most of the rest of the characters cannot begin to match. The other character I will not mention, as they become the ultimate antagonist of the book. The slow reveal of their true plans and intentions is an excellent bit of craft on the part of the author.

The unusual nature of Matthews vis-à-vis the rest of the crew makes it clear that this is a much more late Star Trek than early Star Trek in terms of the characters’ approach to problems. The relatively weaponless nature of the Horizon and the lack of skills in weapons and tactics (Matthews excepted) means that the problems faced and solved usually fall to cleverness, or engineering, or science, as opposed to high-grade weaponry and battle tactics.

And the book is a lot of fun to read. If you are a fan of Star Trek, or Mass Effect, this book is relevant to your interests in creating a familiar yet unique space opera world. And if you ever wondered what you would get by mixing that peanut butter and chocolate, this book, like it was for me, will entirely be your jam. It’s entertaining, deep, philosophical, reflective; and when the action beats need to happen, Chen delivers. The world portrayed is a rich space opera ’verse with enough detail beyond the bounds of the Horizon itself to invite the playground of the imagination.

The book closes off Kim’s story, but given that this is a retirement debriefing on page one, the reader must surely guess that this is the end of her career anyway. The adventure may continue with the Horizon, and with other members of the crew, but as primary point of view and this being Kim’s story, the novel is not, as you might be worried, first in an endless series. Like the rest of Chen’s oeuvre to date, it is a standalone novel that provides an excellent story, flawed and memorable characters, strong worldbuilding and much more for the reader to discover.

Highlights:

• Mass Effect × Star Trek = entertaining space opera
• Strong set of flawed and interesting characters
• Rich and interesting world

Reference: Chen, Mike. The Photonic Effect [Saga Press, 2026].

¹ A reference point for me that Chen probably did not intend comes from the board game Star Fleet Battles, which is set in a version of the Star Trek universe. In that game, there is a design for a Federation cruiser that is very much defanged for war but has high capabilities for science and long-range reconnaissance—the Galactic Survey Cruiser. The Horizon feels a lot more like a Galactic Survey Cruiser than a regular Federation ship.

² There is a tuckerization from Star Trek, too. Watch for it!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin