Monday, August 24, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott


Unconquerable Sun is the latest book by one of my favorite SciFi/Fantasy writers, Kate Elliott, and the first in a new trilogy.  It's a trilogy that I've been awaiting ever since it was announced, with a super intriguing premise:  a space opera genderbent and queer retelling of the story of Alexander the Great.  Elliott is a master of both character building and plotting, telling stories with characters who I've absolutely loved and with plots that often go in very different directions, subverting ones expectations quite frequently.  So yeah, I reserved this in physical from my local library 2 months ago, reserved it from my elibrary 1 month ago, and still took it out in audiobook when i saw it available 10 days ago - I wanted this book that badly.

And Unconquerable Sun largely delivers, although it's clearly the first in a new trilogy, so some judgment has to be reserved pending future developments.  The story features a number of fascinating characters - the side characters here are tremendous - and a plot that opens up slightly slow before accelerating on a breakneck pace from start to finish.  The world is fantastic and while the story is clearly far from concluded, it ends on a very satisfying note for now.  In short, I want more and I want it pretty damn quickly.

Note:  I read this novel entirely in audiobook.  The audiobook reader is very good and the book is well worth your time in that format with one caveat:  a main character - Persephone Lee - uses an alias that's a homophone (Persephone Lĭ), and thus you might be confused in audio how anyone could not figure out who she is as you might not with the spelling.  It's a really really minor issue that has no actual significance to the plot but just something to be aware of for the audio, which is otherwise very good.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
Princess Sun is the only child and thus heir of Queen-Marshal Eirene, the ruler of the Republic of Chaonia.  But she is also the daughter of her mother's second consort, a rogue Gatoi prince.  As the Gatoi are looked upon as savage barbarians by most Chaonians - an impression not helped by the Gatoi banner soldiers largely serving as relentless shock troops for Chaonia's biggest enemy, the Phene Empire - this has made her looked upon with disdain by some in the Republic.  As such, Sun has always tried her hardest to prove her worth, but even winning a major battle against the Phene with bold tactics doesn't seem to merit her mother's praise.

But when an assassination kills one of Sun's companions, she finds herself with an outsider forced upon her in his stead - the wily Persephone Lee, twin to her fallen companion and a member of the extremely ambitious Lee House, responsible for the Republic's intelligence service.  And when her mother takes a new consort, another member of Lee house, Sun finds herself forced to trust Persephone as she has to run for her life from both political infighting and assassination attempts, as someone tries to get her out of the way.

But as Sun and Persephone and Sun's other companions try to find a way to regain Sun's own standing, the rest of the galaxy is not standing still, and the Phene Empire is planning a bold new offensive, one which threatens to change the balance of power in the galaxy.....unless someone is willing to take bold dangerous action to repel them....
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Unconquerable Sun is not just a story transplanting Alexander the Great into the future (and genderswapping the characters), but it's a truly epic space opera story in full.  You have multiple Space Empires, with different cultures and agendas that not only resemble the original cultures of Alexander's time - Chaonia is Macedonia, the Yele League is Greece, the Phene is Persia, etc. - but are fully built out and developed in this universe as well.  In order to build out this setting, and to build out the characters and plot, we follow the perspectives of mainly four* main characters:  Sun (our version of Alexander) Persephone Lee, Zizou (a Gatoi soldier who gets intertwined with Sun & Persephone), and Apama At Sabao, a Phene soldier and pilot.  This shows us a large picture of the entire world, and Elliott as usual does a great job investing it with so much life and detail that it feels real behind the plot and characters moving along.

*The story switches for one chapter randomly to a fifth main character's perspective near the end, and then never jumps back to her, so I don't really count her in the total.*  

 And those characters - well, as expected they are fantastic.  Honestly, Sun was probably the weakest and my least favorite: Sun is a young woman raised from birth, very much thanks to both her status as heir and her parents' expectations and actions, to believe herself deserving of the entire galaxy and destined for greatness.  It's to Elliott's credit that Sun's utterly conceited nature, because she is totally that, is not at all annoying to read, with Sun being good enough at military tactics and split second judgments - if a bit overly prone to anger, a trait which gets her into trouble - and being good-hearted enough to care about those she finds suffering that she's still somehow likable.  In fact, the reason I liked her the least probably has less to do with her than it does how strong the other characters are.

In particular Persephone "Perse" Lee - or "The Wily Persephone" as the chapter titles label her - is utterly phenomenal.  For a reason unexplained as of yet, Persephone's chapters are written in first person (whereas everyone else is written in 3rd person) so we truly get to see most deeply inside her head, as the very smart, if a little naive, woman who ran away from her manipulative and self centered family is forced back into their duty and into Sun's orbit.  Someone accuses Persephone at one point of being just as manipulative and self serving as the rest of her family, and she is to an extent, but unlike them she does have moral limits that she absolutely cares about, and she's just so much fun to read.  And her burgeoning romance with one of the other characters is fantastic.  Then we have Apama At Sabao, who shows us a mainly MilSci-esque story from inside enemy lines (she belongs to Sun's enemy, the Phene), whose scenes are written damn well as she tries to prove her worth through her flying and wonders why she was chosen for her particular mission.  And then there's Zizou, a soldier jerked around by his code of honor and possibly more who finds himself questioning just who he himself is and his own purpose, as he finds himself dragged into Sun's orbit.

All of the above main point of view characters are phenomenal and that even extends to the side characters, particularly Perse's cee cee (aide) Tiana, a young woman of dazzling attractiveness with a lot more to her than her appearance as she joins Perse's side early and aims always to make the most for herself and more importantly her family's situation of Tiana's access to Princess Sun.  Her brazen attitude endeared her not just to Sun, but also to me, which made her a real highlight and I'd love to get her perspective in future books.  And the rest of Sun's companions, from the Honorable James to Sun's lover, Hestia "Hetty" Hope, are nearly as great to follow.

All of these characters inhabit a setting and plot that moves after a slow start at a breakneck pace, as the main trio of POV characters find themselves on the run from unknown and known enemies....and then in the middle of a battle which poses a threat to the Chaonian Empire (where our 4th POV character comes into play).  It's a plot and setting with some really interesting themes weaved in, from the treatment of refugees, to the depths of suffering from inequality that Sun and Persepheone have overlooked as privileged members of the aristocracy (and racism is there too to a lesser extent, as experienced a bit by a our Phene POV character Apama) and perhaps most importantly: the question of what makes a person, the circumstances of their birth - biological or hierarchical - or something else.  Much of this plot, which moves from a space opera thriller to moments of MilSci back to being a thriller with gusto (with moments of romance squeezed in as well), is based upon the characters struggling with that theme, and Elliott makes it work so damn well.

In short, Unconquerable Sun is fantastic and I really want to see where the story goes from here.  It's not perfect - in particular one character's plotline teases a revelation that eventually landed with a bit of a thud for me - or yet my favorite novel of Elliott's, but that's mainly due to the high bar Elliott herself has set.  I've had trouble getting through audiobooks during quarentine because of lack of a commute and a lack of interest in reading that slowly, but I powered through this one, because I needed to know more.  And now I need the sequel.  Damnit.
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