Tuesday, December 22, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Persephone Station by Stina Leicht

 

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 January 5, 2021 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.


Persephone Station is an SciFi novel by former Astounding Award nominee Stina Leicht, who was one of the first authors I wound up reading way back when I got back into the genre.  Her two flintlock epic fantasy novels, Cold Iron and Blackthorne, were in some ways really interesting in what they were trying to do with their multiple characters...yet at the same time often felt incomplete or missing sections of connective tissue needed for plot or character building.  And this was despite both of those books being 600 pages long.  But when this book popped up on NetGalley, I was curious to see whether that pattern would hold true here (especially since she'd worked on this instead of a sequel to Blackthorne).  

And I enjoyed Persephone Station a good bit, even if it very much shares some of the same problems as Blackthorne and Cold Iron.  It's a really interesting  multi-character Sci-Fi novel, featuring the intersection of sentient AIs, human mercenaries and criminals, a powerful human corporation, as well as pacifist aliens who just want to live in peace, with a lot of moving parts and a clear inspiration from The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai.  And it mostly comes all together in the end to a satisfying ending.  On the other hand, while our foremost leading character is excellent, the book has too many pieces to truly develop everyone satisfactorily, leaving other parts of itself feeling incomplete.  Still very much worth a read, even if it can't quite live up to its potential.


----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Persephone is a world the United Republic of Worlds thinks of as unimportant, with an environment that is mostly deadly to humans, and its remnants of a lost alien race being utterly unimportant.  But the Serrao-Orlov Corporation, and the woman who has ruthlessly clawed her way to the top, Vissia Corsini, knows differently.  Because still present on the planet are an advanced alien race, the Emissaries, who just want to live alone in peace with their advanced technology - technology that Vissia craves.  

Rosie was once a guest of the Emissaries along with Vissia, and they have spent the years since her return forming a criminal empire with which they can secretly provide aid to the Emissaries.  

Angel is a down on her luck mercenary, an exiled member of the Gorin martial artist sect, who wishes to somehow reclaim her honor if that's even possible.  And so Rosie's offered suicide mission to defend the Emissaries provides just such an opportunity for her and her crew.

Kennedy Liu is a herself a secret - an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that her creator had illegally managed to program with empathy in addition to emotion - the first of her kind.  But when another AGI contacts her with a distress call, she can't resist taking a body to Persephone to try and find it.

But Vissia's desire for the Emissaries' technology and abilities is reaching a breaking point, and Rosie, Angel and Kennedy will all be drawn into the conflict for the Emissaries' lives....but will any of them or their loved ones survive it?
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So an interview I read portrays Persephone Station to be Leicht's take on a sci-fi woman-focused take on The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai and that's very much a central part of this plot, particularly the plot of our most focused upon character, Angel.  And yet it's also trying to do more than that, with the story also including a plot involving AIs (here usually referred to as AGIs) with both emotion and empathy, as well as it featuring a theme of corporations trying to reap the works of indigenous people's (sort of) through the use of force.  And then there's the story's focus upon friends and found family, caring for each other.  It does all this by flipping between (after the prologue) three viewpoint characters: Angel, Kennedy and Rosie.  

Again, Angel is the protagonist who gets the most focus, and her plotline, which combines the found family elements with the Kurosawa riff, works easily the best.  Angel has all the beats you might expect - exiled due to a mistake causing her to lose the honor of her sect (the Gorin), she has thrown herself first into suicide missions with the military and then into criminal mercenary work desperate for some fight that can make up for her mistake.  She's joined in that respect by a crew of other ex-military mercs used to suicide missions, her pilot Lou, her sniper Enid, and her former boss/best-friend Sukyi, a care-for-nothing woman with a fatal illness.  The comradery between them, along with Angel's own good nature plus general badassness makes their plot really great to read, especially as Angel meets the alien Emissaries and becomes driven to defend them in what might be her final stand.  There's no romance to be found in her plotline as might be expected in other books, but it's not needed, and Angel really works on her own with just friendships in its place.  

Kennedy Liu's plot is a bit more mixed.  In this setting, limited AIs or AGIs exist, but it is illegal to program them to include emotions....because emotions do not necessarily mean they have empathy (and thus lead to rampages).  But Kennedy is such an AGI, whose mother managed to design WITH empathy, and so when she gets a distress call from another such AGI, she can't help but try to come to help.  Naturally this leads her to Rosie and Angel, as a second huge AI requires that she help them, and her constant need to keep herself and her sisters hidden while also helping both the Emissaries and the AI she came to find are well written.  Still, this plot felt kind of incomplete, with the second huge AI's details never being fully revealed, and the reveal at the end just being....there.  

Rosie gets the least focus of the trio, being a crime boss with a conscience who wants to help keep the Emissaries secret and in peace in gratitude for what they did for them when they were young.  They're struggles and employment of Angel and Kennedy is probably the weakest element of the trio's, because other than occasionally providing exposition, none of it actually goes anywhere - everything is resolved by the actions of the other two, and Rosie's one act of seeming-betrayal is never followed up upon.   

The result is a plot that is often fun in terms of action, and again has a number of strong character moments, particularly for Angel and her crew, but often feels like it's going somewhere different at times and yet never actually does.  So you have the AI plotline seemingly ending anticlimactically with the big mysterious AI never actually doing anything more than being a plot shepherd.  You have the prologue featuring one of the Emissaries infecting the antagonist with a biological weapon which seems like it'll have a big effect...and nope, not at all.  You have the implication of it all being a conflict between corporation power and the desires of individuals to be left alone, but the corporation aspect might as well not be there in the end.  Don't get me wrong, the plot still works, with the action scenes being written well and the plot being particularly enjoyable when it comes to the Seven Samurai-esque conflict, and Angel's arc is tremendously satisfying.  But like with my experiences with Leicht's other works, I was left wanting more from teases throughout that never went anywhere, which diminished my enjoyment a bit.  

In short: Persephone Station is an intriguing SF novel at times, and if you're looking for a woman and NB focused take on Kurosawa, this will tickle your itch.  But it hints at being so much more and doesn't quite pull that off.

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