Wednesday, September 25, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Forbidden Stars by Tim Pratt



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 8 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

 Tim Pratt's "The Axiom" trilogy made a pretty damn strong first impression with "The Wrong Stars" (Review Here), featuring an excellent mix of humor and space opera (with a little romance along the way).  The story featured a misfit cast of characters as the crew of a ship discovering a looming Universal Threat from a highly advanced but dormant species of aliens, and the resulting work was a pretty close to perfect lighthearted story that made me crack up and smile while still posing serious consequences for our heroes.  I didn't quite love as much the second book, The Dreaming Stars (Review Here), quite as much, as I felt the book lost a bit of the oddball humor and charm that I loved about the first - it was still pretty good mind you, just not as good.

The Forbidden Stars continues this downward trend and accelerates it, to my disappointment.  The book focuses far more than its predecessors in a single character's perspective and features a far less interesting conflict for most of its duration.  Moreover, not only does the book lose much of its humor, but it feels for much of it like a completely different type of book altogether: one following a hyper competent military-esque agent waging a one woman war on an oppressive underestimating enemy.  There's nothing wrong with that type of plot and its competently executed, but it's not what I've come to expect from the first two books in the series, and even executed nicely it feels kind of generic as a result.


-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Callie and the crew of the White Raven have managed to survive and destroy two installations built and hidden in space by the evil Axiom, the now dormant alien race with a habit for genocidal dominance and control.  They've gotten used to using some of the Axiom's own tech against them, even if it's tough to be the only ones who know the threat exists, with little help outside their own crew.  And Callie's tight crew, with her new XO (and lover) Elena, pilots Drake and Janice, tech guy and self-modification lover Ashok, along with the alien Lantern and her AI Shall, are tight as ever and ready to try and continue to take steps to safeguard the galaxy.

But when the mysterious person identifying itself as "The Benefactor" suggests that Callie and the White Raven investigate the one system in the galaxy that was once open to Humans before the wormhole gate cut off, the crew finds themselves up against a place where humans have quite clearly come in conflict with enemy alien forces.....and lost devastatingly.  Joined by an AI agent of the Benefactor who claims to be there to help, Callie and the White Raven will have to face down a system of aliens dedicated to scientific experiment on humanity, if they want to prevent greater horrors down the line.  But even if they're able to somehow triumph and save the day once again, the question remains: who exactly is the Benefactor and what is his real agenda?  Because someone with such knowledge and technology could possibly be as much a threat as anything else if he's truly not on their side.....
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The prior two books in the series have used multiple point of view characters to tell the story: the first book alternated between Callie and Elena's points of view, while the second book alternated between Callie, Elena, and Stephen.  This worked really well to play up the fun natures of this ensemble cast, as well as the relations between them (particularly in Callie/Elena's romance in the first book).  The Forbidden Stars on the other hand, is near-entirely told - with one notable portion of the book being a rare exception - from Callie's point of view.  It's a very noticeable change which makes this book feel a lot less like an ensemble book and a lot more like a book about Callie, badass starship captain and fighter for justice.

Which does work, because Callie is still a fun and excellent character to read, as she finds herself and the ship in constant danger - often of her own making.  This book treats Callie a lot like a one woman army, a commando who can barely be stopped, thanks to her own quick thinking and ingenuity, and the technological advantages she's obtained over the past two books.  She's paranoid at times, compassionate at others, basically everything you'd expect after the first two books, but just more into a commando mold than previously in the series.

Of course, this focus on Callie, and conversion of her into a one-woman ass-kicking machine, results in the book losing its focus on the rest of the characters.  Which honestly?  It's a big loss, and a mistake in my opinion.  Elena's relationship with Callie is basically always taken for granted in this book, which is weird given how important it was to the prior two books, and Elena herself barely does anything.  Shall and Lantern are still the same characters and still very functional, but the lack of focus makes them hardly anything special, which again is weird: for example, the book makes one reference to Lantern having a crush on another member of the crew (revealed at the end of book 2) and then never anything else of it.  Janice and Drake do get development in the one exception part I mentioned above, but it just comes out of nowhere, occurs, and then has no impact on anything else so it feels totally wasted.  Really the only other cast member who gets decent page time is Ashok, and even he is just basically the same as he's always been, and a lot less hilarious at this point.

Even the new character Kaustikos basically never has any personality other than to grumble about how he's being used by the crew - a discomfort that never goes anywhere - and then to perform necessary actions to the resolution of the plot at the end.  For a series that started as one that was incredibly character based to go along with a plot that allowed to great humor, this book is instead more plot-focused and the character work is mostly nonexistent.  Similarly, the humor is still here in spurts, but the book is nowhere near as humorous as even the second book.  I mean the plot of this book is fine - you'll see one twist coming a mile away, but it all works out well to a neat resolution, but the reason The Wrong Stars was so great was not because of its plot, but because of how great the characters were.  And hell, even the plot is less exciting that previous books given how damn easy everything is for Callie to resolve throughout - which I guess makes sense given her experiences leveling her up, but still this area of space has been teased as important for two whole books now and instead what we find there is pretty damn lackluster.

So yeah, The Forbidden Stars is fine, and if you've read the first two books and enjoyed them like I did, you may want to read this for the conclusion to the narrative arc.  But it's a long way down from where we started, to my major disappointment, and I wouldn't blame even a reader of the first two books from skipping it.
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