Thursday, January 30, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Pale Light in the Black by K.B. Wagers



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 March 3, 2020 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.


A Pale Light in the Black is the first book in a new series by author KB Wagers, known for their prior Indranan and Farian War space opera trilogies (featuring their gunrunner empress lead, Hail Bristol).  But in contrast to those novels, A Pale Light in the Black is set in a much nearer future, featuring at its heart a sometimes friendly sometimes not conflict between SF versions of modern military services, with a space version of the Coast Guard - the NeoG - at its center.  As a big fan of the Hail Bristol novels, I was excited to read Wagers' next work, so I was excited to get an advance copy of this book to review.

And I really loved A Pale Light in the Black, a story that is so positive in its depiction of camaraderie, love, and family that I fell near instantly in love with the characters.  It is still a story with conflict mind you - both in friendly (interservice) and not-so-friendly (in an antagonist conspiracy) - so it's not quite channeling Becky Chambers' Wayfarer works, but the way the book portrays its main cast gelling together, and how they each deal with their various loves and families, is just terrific.  Oh and the cast includes plenty of wiseass protagonists, bar fighting, and space adventures as the central NeoG team does their job to safeguard human space.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
The NeoG - the Near-Earth Orbital Guard - is the branch of the Coalition of Human Nations (CHN) dedicated to ensuring the safety of human being controlled space, in the vein of the old Earth's Coast Guards.  The crew of the NeoG Interceptor Zuma's Ghost is the NeoG's top Interceptor crew - both in its ability to patrol the space of the Sol System and in its performance in the annual boarding games - where the NeoG managed to come up just short of beating the Navy team last year.  Winning the boarding games would prove NeoG's worth to those who mock them, and so the crew - experienced Commander Rosa, second-in command Lieutenant Commander Nika, mechanic and fighter Jenks, computer expert Sapphi, and pilot and team-mom Ma want desperately to pull it off.

But winning may just become all that much harder when Nika is promoted to her own ship out of system and the crew gains a new member: Lieutenant Maxine "Max" Carmichael.  The odd woman out of the legendary family responsible for the LifeEx technology that increased human lifespans and made space travel possible, Max is a brilliant analyst, but awkward and uncomfortable with other people, and a total newbie to the idea of the games.  To make it worse, as Zuma's Ghost prepares for the games, they find themselves on the trail of a mysterious conspiracy of a ship and its passengers reappearing after more than a century of being considered lost - a conspiracy that someone will do anything to keep hidden.

Max and the crew of Zuma's Ghost will have to pull themselves together as a crew and as a family and get their shit together if they want to actually pull off the unprecedented and win the Boarding Games for NeoG.....to say nothing of surviving the conspiracy and other dangers that come with being a member of the Near-Earth Orbital Guard....
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A Pale Light in the Black is an ensemble book, with the protagonists being the entire crew of the Zuma's Ghost, rather than any single character.  As such, the book shifts perspectives between that of Rosa, Nika, Jenks, and Max (with occasional interludes to display letters and communications between characters).  Max is probably the most prominent character, but all of the above four have full character arcs that are central to this novel.

Which works because they're all tremendous characters and Wagers writes them and this world in a fascinatingly positive way.  Whereas the "established team has a key member replaced by a newbie" plot has been done many times before, it usually comes with it conflict and struggle between the old members and the new, as the new member desperately tries to prove themselves throughout the novel so that they can gain acceptance.  Here, Max is accepted pretty much right away - and the only person who doesn't do so wholeheartedly (Jenks) only holds back because the departed member was her brother - and the only one Max needs to prove that she belongs to is....herself.  The crew is incredibly supportive of one another, and conflicts tend to be internal rather than external.  So for example, Rosa struggles with the belief that she failed the team in the last Boarding Games and with crises of her own personal faith; Jenks struggles with being apart from her brother for the first time and with the very idea of a relationship turning more serious, because Jenks inwardly believes she's not worth someone else's love; and Max again struggles with his own belief that he doesn't have a place and the issues of his family's rejection of his path.  But since the conflicts in their character arcs are internal rather than external, each of the characters, including the less prominent members of the crew, is supportive of the other and that's really enjoyable to read.

I should point out that this supportiveness is also reflected by the setting Wagers has created here: this world featured a "collapse" in the 21st century, followed by humanity pulling itself together into this form 3 centuries later with some very positive adjustments.  So every person has an internal chip installed that allows them to display to others their name and their chosen pronouns, which no one has any problem with using.  Sexual Orientations are not an issue for anyone, with characters being straight, bi, gay, ace, etc throughout without any special noting, with some characters being into sex with practically anything that moves (Jenks) and others being....not, and none of it is treated as abnormal.*  There's still conflict mind you - again, there's interservice rivalries between Navy and NeoG and others here, and there are people with alternate views of the future that lead them to criminal enterprises that form the external plot for this book.  It's not a utopia - but it's still a really nice positive world that is enjoyable to read after so many dystopian futures, and provides for a setting where the characters can really grow and develop in fun interesting ways.

*If I have one complaint about this, it's that the book essentially ignores the issue of rank when it comes to characters having sex - and while no one in this book ever abuses rank for sex or even comes close to suggesting it, it strikes me as odd in a military context for the issue never to come up or even be addressed - given how normalized sex is as a behavior here, I guess it's possible the subject just never occurs to anyone, but it feels a weird omission.  

So yeah, I loved the setting and the characters here, which are so nice and refreshing - and I should point out, incredibly fun to read.  There's wisecracking and banter, physical combat and strategizing, romance and well....bar fights (there is at least 3 in this book that I can think of off hand) and all of it is written really well, to the point of which I may come back to this book when I need something enjoyable and light to read.  The book isn't perfect: the main external conflict of the conspiracy clearly takes a back seat to the inter-service Boarding Games and thus finds itself resolved incredibly quickly in the end (although I suspect that conflict may not be quite over for this series, so perhaps we'll get more into it next book).  But the ending remains really satisfying and I really really look forward to reading more of the NeoG in future books.
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