Monday, June 15, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Old Lie by Claire G Coleman


The Old Lie is the second novel by Claire G. Coleman, author of "Terra Nullius" (which I reviewed here).  Terra Nullius was a brilliant but brutal work, with Coleman presenting a SciFi world in which the atrocities committed upon people of her heritage - Coleman is part of the South Coast Noongar people (Indigenous Australian) - occur once again.  That novel was released to acclaim in Australia, only coming over to the US a while later thanks to a small press.  The Old Lie was published in Australia in 2019, but has not yet been picked up by a North American Publisher - so the only format you can buy it here is in ebook.  But Coleman's work is well worth the extra effort to obtain, so I went ahead and purchased it despite having plenty available from other sources to read.

And it was well worth it.  The Old Lie is essentially a spiritual successor to Terra Nullius, once again using science fiction to apply the atrocities of the past - particularly the atrocities inflicted upon the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities - to more generalized humanity.  In this case, it's a military science fiction novel showcasing the horrors and abuses of war - from what it does to the victims caught in the crossfire, to what it does to the people fighting it, and beyond....as those who make the decisions to wage war abuse that power to their own ends, and inflict those abuses even on those who are fighting for them.

This is a brutal book, filled with harsh themes and lessons from the past.  And while it isn't as perfectly put together as Terra Nullius, it is devastatingly compelling and powerful and impossible to put down once it gets going.  Worth your dollars now, and I hope a North American publisher brings it over here soon.

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
When an Alien group called the Conglomeration attacked Earth, humanity survived only due to the intervention of another Alien group known as the Federation.  In gratitude, humans worldwide joined up with the Federation military to take on their one-time invaders.

Shane Daniels enlisted in the infantry of the Federation, against her husband's and kids' wishes.  Her best friend, Romany "Romeo' Zetz, is a pilot with a habit of insubordination - well, sleeping with her fellow pilots - but skills that keep pushing her back up the ranks.  The two are beginning to feel tired of the bloody war, having seen horrors beyond measure, and long to return to Earth.

But back on Earth, things may not be as they remembered it being for humanity, to say nothing of how things are for humanity out in the Black.....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As usual the above plot summary, which is similar to the one on Amazon, is very basic and incomplete - for example Romeo and Shane (especially Shane)'s arcs may be the most prominent in the book, but a third major arc features a pair of humans - Jimmy and Itta - as they flee from bad circumstances among alien refugees and desperately try to return to Earth, even as the refugees keep getting forcibly ejected from station to station.  And then there's the arc of a prisoner named William and a survivor of a strange attack named Walker, who we return to from time to time.  These switches in perspective to not obviously related plot arcs can be jarring for a while in this book, especially as they come in the middle of the completion of other events - the book switches to Jimmy's arc in the middle of a space battle for Romeo and Shane early on for example.  But naturally Coleman brings everything together in the end.

And Coleman does so with tremendous prose in the end.  Some of the MilSci stuff may seem generic, but it works, and the horrors and brutality of war are shown quite clearly, especially through Shane's desperate attempts to prevail against overwhelming odds.  But despite the constant poetry quotes about the horrors and evils of war, this book is more than about that, although its other topics are similarly horror-filled: medical experimentation on humans, treatment of refugees, and the treatment of different-looking strangers who support and/or don't support your cause.

These themes are clearly carried over from the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia, which are then converted into this SF plot.  Whereas Terra Nullius dealt with re imagining the atrocities done to those peoples by colonizing Australians, The Old Lie takes its inspiration from what happened to the Natives who left their homes in Australia to fight for the nation and what happened to them as they fought a war for the purposes of other people.

Needless to say this isn't a pleasant book, but it's damn powerful and it works tremendously well.  Its characters may sometimes be very archetypal - Romeo as the wild insubordinate pilot who likes sex too much for her own good in particular - but archetypes are used for a reason, and Coleman makes them work really damn well and you care tremendously about them, whether it be Shane with her determination to survive and get back to her family, and her effort to stay together for the troops she commands, even when she'd rather lay down in the dirt like the least of them; or Jimmy, who had never seen another human before and latches on to Itta as someone - another human - he absolutely has to protect, etc.  You will care tremendously about these characters by the end, and even when you don't that much (Walker, William) what happens to them is so rough that it's hard not to care.

Again, what happens in this book is not very pleasant, like the history that inspired it.  If you've read Terra Nullius you'll be waiting for the bottom to drop out immediately; even if you haven't, Jimmy, Walker, and William's chapters will make it clear that something terrible is going on unknown to the other characters.  The only question, for those who aren't familiar with the history - or like me, the specifics of that past history - is what: and Coleman reveals this masterfully and powerfully.  In a choice that especially works, most of the main cast, including Romeo & Shane, are of Indigenous origin themselves, and as such are well aware of the parallels to the past - the book isn't meta about this, but as the revelations occur, the characters are quick to grasp what is happening....again.  It only makes the book more devastating, as characters who have had hope for perhaps the first time in history find it taken away brutally, in a way that applies to not just their group this time...but is perhaps more devastating because it has happened once before.  Nothing has changed, the terrors recur.  And we, like the characters, must resist and fight back and not just let it happen.

If there is a thing that drops this book below Terra Nullius in terms of excellence, it's that the plot sometimes relies upon ridiculous coincidence regarding the meeting/relationships of certain characters, which can be a bit jarring for the narrative - Spoiler in ROT13: Wvzzl naq Vggn ghea bhg gb or ovbybtvpny fvoyvatf juvpu vf fb vafnaryl vzcebonoyr nf gb or evqvphybhf - naq gb jvaq hc nebhaq Rnegu ng gur fnzr gvzr nf Funar, jub gheaf bhg gb or gurve zbgure.  This is a minor complaint and the result of those coincidences is to give the final sequences of this book more of an absolute gut punch, really, so I guess it's justified even if it's a bit silly at the time.

Like Terra Nullius, The Old Lie ends on a hell of a moment, and with a speech from a character more or less showing Coleman's intent - but a speech that feels absolutely earned.  In theory, the book could lend itself to an actual sequel - one would absolutely not be necessary, but if it ever did, I'll be there.



Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)