Friday, November 9, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers




Behind the Thrones is the first book in K.B. Wagers' "The Indranan War" trilogy.  I came to this book backwards - having read the first book (There Before the Chaos) in the sequel trilogy to this one first, I then saw my local library carried this book, so I took it out.  As a result of reading the most recent book first, I did have some foreknowledge of what is going to happen in this book, but it wasn't enough to really affect my enjoyment of the story at all.

And I enjoyed Behind the Throne a decent bit.  It's a SciFI Political Thriller with the potential to turn into Space Opera (just like There Before the Chaos), but it doesn't quite turn into such here, with the action being confined essentially to a single planet after the beginning.  Still the characters are well done and the plotting is solid, and the writing is such that I basically couldn't put this down till I finished it in one day.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
When galactic gunrunner Cressen Stone comes to on her trashed ship in the middle of space, she at first doesn't remember what's happened - and what killed all her crew.  And then a paramilitary force onboard grabs her, a force she's been running from for 20 years.  For this crew are from the Indranan Empire, and "Cressen Stone" is an alias - her real name is Hail Bristol, second daughter of the Empress of the Indranan Empire.  And this crew has come to drag Hail back to her home planet, willing or not.

And the Empire is on the verge of crisis: Hail's sisters have both been assassinated, as has her niece, leaving Hail as the only remaining heir to the throne.  And Hail's mother, the Empress has been diagnosed with a form of dementia and is losing it....meaning Hail may soon be the Empress of the Empire whose ways she now abhors and which she never wanted to come back to.

But the political powers that have remained in the Empire all this time aren't very comfortable with the idea of Hail being in charge and Hail is well aware of the plotting behind her back to deal with the situation.  And then the agents who assassinated the rest of her family are still out there, and certainly won't stop now that Hail is back in play.  It will take Hail not only remembering her training in politics, but her skills as a gunrunner, in order for her to survive and to prevent the Empire from falling into chaos.
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It's hard to explain why I liked Behind the Throne so much, just like with There Before the Chaos.  The book doesn't really fit into a very easy category, with it sort of being like political SF with its heroine trying to navigate uncertain political waters, find out who her allies and enemies are, and not make any missteps, but it's not really a book that deals too heavily with the politics of the Empire just yet.  It's not really a thriller for most of the book either, despite the lurking threat in the background throughout of someone trying to kill Hail, nor is it really a mystery (which enemies are plotting against Hail is known fairly early-ish in the book).

Whatever it is, it all works. Hail is a really fun main character - stuck between a position she doesn't want, and a duty she can't quite reject outright under the circumstances, not to mention the expectations of others, such as her mother, of her - Hail strikes a great balance between being a woman of direct action and one who knows a little more subtlety is required, and her emotions and frustrations are easy to empathize with.  Despite the fact that she's spent the last 20 years as a criminal in space, she's unquestionably a good guy here, and it works quite well.

(One Minor Complaint: Hail's occupation the past 20 years is constantly referred to as "gunrunner," but the book never really gets into what that actually was.  It's like calling Han Solo a "Smuggler" or another character a "Pirate" - it's just meant to be a criminal occupation that involved some bad/ruthless acts in the past, which makes it weird because of how often the word is used.  A minor complaint but it's weird.)

The other side characters here are effectively done, even if most of them aren't particularly special.  I enjoyed Emmory and Zin, the two trackers who become Hail's primary bodyguards quite a bit, but they're the most developed side characters really in this book - and this book includes a LOT of characters, to the point where I suspect I would've been a little lost as to who the minor characters were - and I still was a little - if I hadn't read There Before the Chaos (where some of the important ones recur) first.  This isn't really a big character book, despite the lack of action in large parts of it.

Still the plot is effective and the writing is well done enough that I tore through this book, finishing it in the same day I took it out from the library.  I'm looking into finishing this trilogy as soon as I can get my hands on the other two books, which is as big a recommendation I can give it. 

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