This book is the second in the trilogy Engines of Light; it certainly cannot stand on its own, requiring the reader to be reasonably familiar with the events of the first novel, Cosmonaut Keep. A number of reviewers have commented that they feel it suffers from ‘middle book syndrome’, wherein nothing much happens at considerable length to fulfil the requirement for a trilogy to have a Middle. I’m not so sure about that. This certainly isn’t identikit space opera fare; as such, I suspect some people are seeing “Book Two” on the cover and putting their poor reaction to the story down to middle book syndrome.
The thing is this: Ken Macleod has not written a conventional space opera. In book one, we were introduced to the Second Sphere, a distant star system populated by a mix of humans and evolved creatures whose origin was Earth but whose ancestors were all abducted from this world in prehistoric times by alien superbeings, for reasons as yet undiscovered. Also in the Second Sphere are the descendents of the crew of the first human starship to leave Earth. Some of those descendents aren’t; a number of the original crew appear to have acquired great longevity. Trade between the worlds ot the Second Sphere is conducted by faster-than-light starships, but having an ftl drive does not excuse those who travel from system to system from the inconveniences of relativistic star flight; centuries can pass between starship visits. Traders’ ships are piloted by krakens, one of the evolved ancient species abducted from Earth. Humans are not permitted starflight – until the cosmonaut familiies of the world of Mingulay rediscover its secrets and recommission the only human starship, the Bright Star, to travel to nearby worlds to try to find Answers to all the Big Questions.
Cosmonaut Keep was written as one of Macleod’s stranded narratives, with two different stories at two different times and places intertwined and coming together at the end (although the reader has to infer this). But that bringing together of the strands means that there is only a single story going forward; the arrival of the Bright Star at the world of Croatan, and the impact that arrival has on local politics and the lives of some of its inhabitants.
In the course of the story, the crew of the Bright Star communicate with two of the godlike entities that can be found around each of the inhabited worlds. What they find spurs them to action; and that action forces change on the inhabitants of Croatan. Those inhabitants have a society divided between an urban, technologically savvy (but roughly mid-20th Century level) society, inhabiting one major, industrialised city; and an isolated, roughly Celtic level society descended from transplanted prehistoric humans who have no access to metals but have evolved a society and an econonic niche based on handicrafts and the manufacture of gliders and sophisticated hot-air balloons. This second society also has a different take on issues of gender identity and assignation. Whether an individual in this society identifies (or is identified) as male or female is dependant on role and status, and not on biology. Macleod plays with these ideas in a very easy way.
The second half of the novel is taken up with the cosmonauts’ reactions to what they learn from the planetary superbeings and how they play out those reactions against the political backdrop of Croatan. We are looking here at two characters who are skilled political organisers. It’s a Ken Macleod novel, so of course there’s radical politics in it, though once more he rings the changes on political organisation and actually shows that organisation in action on the ground.
At the end of the novel, the lives of the POV characters on Croatan are changed. In that, this isn’t a typical ‘middle book’. At the same time, the characters who came along from Cosmonaut Keep have changed, learnt, and made their decisions about how they take matters forward. There is the continuity of the trilogy. The plot of events on Croatan is self-contained, though I said at the outset that you need to have read Cosmonaut Keep and that remains true because without it, the reader will not understand the motivations of the cosmonaut characters. But the world-building is well handled, and the political machinations have their own momentum.
One criticism: two characters from the first book, who featured fairly heavily in it, are sent off to a university laboratory to Do Important Sciency Things and do not reappear until the end of the novel. It may be that this book didn’t need them but that they will be needed in the third volume; but their sidelining is irritatingly obvious.
So, a book which confounds those expecting the obvious. The thrid book promises more encounters with the godlike aliens.
Deep Waters Reading 