Monday, August 22, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Terminal Peace by Jim C. Hines

 


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 August 23, 2022 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.
Terminal Peace is the long delayed* conclusion to Jim C Hines' fun space opera series "Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse", which began with Terminal Alliance a bunch of years back.  As you might imagine from the series title, this is a fun space opera series, in which humanity has fallen into feral monsters due to an unknown plague (explained in the series), cured somewhat and recruited by an alien alliance to help secure the galaxy as soldiers....only for the story to follow a series of Janitors/Sanitation-working humans who wind up in control of an alliance ship and forced to save the day repeatedly.  There's a lot of sanitation/toilet based humor, the characters all take names after various parts of pop culture that they don't quite understand the 20th/21st century context of for maximum humor, and well...it's a whole bunch of fun.

*The delay is explained in the back of the book as due in large part due to Hines' struggle with losing his wife during that time.  

Terminal Peace continues the story of the EDFS Pufferfish and Captain Marion "Mops" Adamopolous and her crew and manages to conclude the trilogy in an enjoyable, poignant, and well immensely satisfying volume.  It even adds in sort of a sob-story that made me tear up a bit, especially when combined with the author's note, and deals with some serious themes of free will, predestination, and well, lots of cleaning and alien humor to continue to keep the fun going along the way.  Is it some profound work?  No, of course not - again this is the silly side of space opera, and it knows it.  But it still pulls it

----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
Captain Marion "Mops" Adamopolous and her fellow crew on the EDFS Pufferfish have been outcasts, heroes, and the most unlikely discovers of truth - like that the plague that turned seemingly all of humanity into Ferals was in fact the creation of the Krakau alliance that once claimed to be their saviors or that immune humans exist on Earth.  All this despite the fact that they were really just meant to be Hygiene and Sanitation Workers, whose best skills involve knowing what are the best cleaning fluids to use the right situations.  

Now Mops faces a threat that is even more implacable than before: her body is rejecting the Krakau cure and is reverting to a Feral State....and soon, within months or even just a few weeks, she will be gone.  But Mops doesn't have time to just sit and wait....the galaxy is teetering on the edge of renewed war between the splintering Krakau alliance and the murderous Prodryans, and Earth is directly in the crosshairs.  Their only hope is to investigate the mysterious planet Tuxatl and its inhabitants, the Jynx, a race that the Prodryans fear for some strange reason.  

First Contact is hardly in Mops' skills, even if she wasn't in danger of becoming a mindless beast.  But it's all up to her and her crew to achieve it and to figure out a way to use what they learn from the Jynx to save humanity....if the secrets of the Jynx aren't even more dangerous to the galaxy than the Prodryans themselves.....
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To a certain extent Terminal Peace delivers more of what you got from the prior two novels - a fun bonkers plot, featuring silly shenanigans - distracting an enemy war leader with checkers! tactical use of cleaning fluids! etc. - toilet/janitorial humor, and an oddball cast of misfits, both human and otherwise who just take things in surprising and hilarious directions at times.  And the new characters we meet here, the Jynx, present us with new interesting ideas and ethical dilemmas (at what cost, or with what means - no matter how hypocritical - is one willing to use to save their people?).  

But what we also get here is an additional poignant plot stemming from Mops' disease, in a plot Hines admits in an afterwards was inspired by what happened with his own wife. Mops' struggle to keep herself going, to deal with her the realities of her own reversion and how that might affect her team is sometimes heartbreaking, especially near the end, and how the rest of the team reacts to it also is really done well (with the book shifting POV characters at times to account for this).  Hines treats this surprisingly realistically - although the disease in question (reverting to a feral mindless beast form) is in some ways comedic, it's actually treated serious and not something that can simply be overcome with determination and strength.  Rather Mops has to ensure that steps are taken for her team to be able to move forward once the disease starts taking her out of the loop, and she does exactly that.  And this works really well as a thoroughline throughout the novel....although unlike in real life, Hines does manage to give this a happy ending.  But it's a happy ending that isn't cheap and is earned, which makes it perfect. 

And again around all that we have a fun enjoyable plot, with some crazyness to go along with some ethical themes - like would it be wrong, for those who have fought against an alien species that wrongly affected their species' mental autonomy, to use a weapon that would affect another species' mentality and make them more peaceful?  The answer is of course yes, but Hines does a great job at setting the stakes such that you'd think such might be an ends justify the means like moment, even as he allows his heroes to find another way....And this of course involves Janitorial/cleaning humor, lawyer humor from a ruthless warlike species (Cate is the best), and more zaniness, so never think it gets all too serious.  

All in all, a highly enjoyable concluding volume and I very much recommend it.  

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