Friday, November 22, 2019

Short Book Reviews: First-Rate Multiple POV Space Opera


The Cruel Stars, by John Birmingham (Del Rey)

The popularly conceived optimal number of point-of-view characters changes with the times, everything from only a single, first-person protagonist to a cast of thousands, er, dozens. I love how multiple points of view, even those that seem to be unrelated at the beginning, come together, and John Birmingham’s The Cruel Stars falls squarely in that category. The story begins with a handful of characters who seem to have little in common, except living in the same universe, in which humans have populated planets across the galaxy: a young lieutenant in one of the space navies, a princess of a planet’s ruling family, a curmudgeonly astroarchaeologist, and a space pirate. When the Human Republic, long defeated and exiled for their extreme opposition to any modification of “natural” humans – either by tech or genetic modification – attacks, their first move is through the galactic network linking everyone who’s logged in, essentially frying their brains and turning them into psychotic cannibals. With the leadership and aristocracy decimated, our disparate characters end up among the few competent people who are unaffected. Especially moving was the ship’s digital Intellect, who walls off and then essentially sacrifices themself, rather than spread the contagion to their human shipmates.

This space opera entertains endlessly with skillfully handled dramatic tension and first-rate world building.


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