The other book that I've torn through really quickly this week is the sequel to Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. The first third of the sequel, Ragamuffin is freely available on the web page for the book, for those who are interested. I tend to find sample chapters frustrating, though, so I didn't read it until this week, when Kate brought home a hard copy.
Crystal Rain was Caribbean-flavored steampunk set on a lost colony world, where a war between humans and the alien Teotl has left both groups stranded on the planet Nanagada with very little technology. The war is still being waged, though mostly using human proxies-- the Teotl have set up a neo-Aztec society revolving around human sacrifice, and use their Azteca followers to attack the remnants of the original human culture, who are badly outnumbered and struggling to keep from being totally overwhelmed.
Ragamuffin opens out in the wider culture from which the human colonists of Nanagada (originally "New Anegada") were drawn, and they're not doing a whole lot better. Humans eke out a marginal existence in the empire of forty-eight worlds controlled by the "Benevolent Satrapy." Following a rebellion several centuries in the past, humans are technically free (though Earth and the rebel colony of Chimson have both been cut off from the wormhole network that makes interstellar travel possible), but in reality, they're mostly confined to reservations on a few planets and space habitats. The only really free humans are the Ragamuffins, remnants of the military arm of the human rebellion, who eke out a living as traders, smugglers, and pirates.
Into this uneasy situation comes a woman called Nashara, who was sent from Chimson on a slower-than-light transport to bring aid to the other human colonies. She's heavily modified so as to be nearly indestructible, and carries a sort of doomsday device that might give humans the ability to bring down the Satraps. It might give humanity the means to fight back, if she can get it to the right people. The problem is, she arrives just at the point when the Hongguo, the human enforcement arm of the Satrapy, are about to embark on an all-out campaign to eliminate the Ragamuffins...
This book has a much different feel than Crystal Rain, as it's space opera rather than lost-colony steampunk. Buckell handles this just as assuredly as he did the planet-bound adventure of the earlier book, and there are some great pyrotechnics as Nashara makes her way across the Satrapy, including the chase across a decimated space habitat that's shown in the cover painting.
This book also does an excellent job of adding depth and moral complexity to the universe. The situation on Nanagada (the story returns there in the second third) turns out not to be quite as clear-cut as you might have tought from the first book, and some difficult compromises need to be made to save humanity. The Satraps and their human pawns are impressively creepy, but some of the protagonists also have an edge to them. There are also some looming threats in the background for future books to deal with.
The only real complaint I have is that the book may be a bit too quick to leave Nanagada behind-- some major changes are set in motion there, but we don't get to see how they play out, and the characters don't really give it much thought after the story moves on. Of course, they're a little too busy for thinking, and anyway, there will be more books in the series, so we'll presumably get another chance to find out what happens.
This was a really fun read, though. I read the whole thing through in a couple of big chunks, which I rarely manage to do these days, but it was good enough that I was willing to make time for reading it in extended blocks. And I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where the story will go from here.
- Log in to post comments