Monday, February 18, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review A Passage of Stars by Kate Elliott




A Passage of Stars is the first book in Kate Elliott's* SF space opera Highroad Trilogy, the first series/trilogy she published, way back in 1990.  Readers of this blog (the few of you) or my twitter feed will know that Elliott is one of my favorite authors, and I've loved nearly everything I've read from her (Jaran, Crossroads,and Spiritwalker series rank among my favorite series....ever).  So naturally when I had extra Hoopla borrows to use at the end of last month, I opted to pick up the first book in this trilogy since I was pretty sure I'd be satisfied.

*The book was originally published under her Elliott's real name of Alis A. Rasmussen, but since the reissued e-book I read off Hoopla uses her pen name instead, I'm using that here.  

 And well, you can tell A Passage of Stars is one of Elliott's earliest works, but it's still very solid and enjoyable.  Like several of her other books, it starts slowly, before accelerating in the middle to a pretty great pace.  It reminds me quite a bit of an early template of her Spiritwalker trilogy, in that it features a strong female heroine placed into a world/universe she knows far less about than she realized and finds herself caught between actors with multiple hidden agendas, such that it is never quite clear how the book is going to resolve each of these seemingly incompatible plot points.  But while I'm not sure I enjoyed this as much as the first Spiritwalker book (Cold Magic), it's still really good and different in its own way with issues of discrimination and revolution on the forefront.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Lily Ransome is a young woman who has never fit in with her clan - a wealthy mining clan that provides her with two options for her life on the underground mining planet of Unruli: either join the corporation, or begin producing children.  The only things she has she can enjoy are the strange musical robot Bach and her martial arts lessons - but her family's patience for her unorthodox behavior is running out.

Yet when her second father-figure, her Martial Arts instructor Heredes, is abducted by mysterious alien bounty hunters, Lily risks everything to follow.  In the process she finds the universe isn't as simple as it was back on Unruli, with the tyrannical government of the local set of planets oppressing a minority culture known as the Ridani, and a Rebel leading an underground movement of revolution growing in strength.  As Lily chases Heredes into space, she finds herself caught up in the conflict...and feeling like something has to change from the way it is.

But there's more going on in the universe than the conflict between these forces, and Heredes is right in the thick of it - a conflict between a strangely technologically advanced faction of humans from a lost part of Space, perhaps from humanity's long-lost homeworld, and others with unknown agendas.  And as Lily and her robot Bach find their way through this strange universe with competing factions, she will have to find the strength within herself to take charge and aid those she trusts for the sake of doing what's right....
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Like a few of Elliott's later books, A Passage of Stars starts rather slowly, with Lily taking a while to first get off Unruli and into the depths of the conflict between factions out in Space.  But also like those books, once you get through those first few chapters (about a 1/3 of the way in), it speeds up quite nicely, making it rather hard to put down (it took me about a day and a half to finish this book).  And again, like those books, the story features a number of factions with their own agendas, some of which seem to be operating on totally different planes from the other - in other words, not competing, but just dealing with different spaces and people on a whole different level - and yet Elliott always makes it work and I feel really interested in seeing how they will play out in the rest of this trilogy.

As is generally the case in Elliott books, its main heroine, Lily, is great.  I think I say this a lot but it's still true - "the naive heroine or hero discovers the world is harsher than she or he knows and is shocked as a result" is a tired trope and Elliott strongly averts it here - Lily is maybe not quite aware of how things work in the rest of the universe, but she is rarely truly shocked by it, quickly adapting to these injustices and trying to do something to change them if she can.  She's also kind of an inversion of the typical trope for heroines - rather than being capable intellectually (which she is mind you) and not capable physically from the start, there is no question of Lily's physical abilities from the get-go: she's a trained martial artist and a phenomenally good one.  These skills are useful...but less so than you might think of course, but they work out to make it so that, even as Lily bounces between agendas she often barely understands, she generally has her own autonomy.

The rest of the characters are a bit more hit or miss, as we don't spend nearly enough time with them to know them.  Mentor Heredes and the mysterious Kyosti get the most other time besides Lily, and there's enough there to be tantalizing, but not enough to truly get to know who they are as characters (we get some looks into Heredes' head seemingly at random, but not enough).  A crew of smugglers (essentially) provide some of the more interesting side characters as well, but we don't get to see them nearly enough.  Fortunately, Lily is strong enough to carry this book by herself for the most part.

The plot also works quite well, although there's a time-skip near the end which works in order to make the plot flow but just felt a little awkward, as the events that occur in between are quite significant and it feels a bit weird to just gloss over them (on the other hand, it would slow things down considerably to not have time-skipped, so I get it).  And we end on a cliffhanger with nothing really settled other than the background, making this book not work well at all for those looking for a single book to read rather than having a clear investment in a trilogy.  But I'll be continuing nonetheless, and as Elliott's books have a habit of picking up strongly in the 2nd book of of a trilogy, I expect that'll improve as well.

The result is that A Passage of Stars feels clearly like a template for (better) later books of Elliott's but it still has a good bit of value on its own.  Read those later books first, but you won't regret I think reading this one afterwards as well.
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