A Son of the Rock

Tor 2010. 393p. Third Book of The Shoal Sequence.

This continues the adventures of Dakota Merrick and the Shoal member Trader In Faecal Matter Of Animals which started in Stealing Light and was followed by Nova War. The plot concerns the seeking out of an ancient weapon called the Mos Hadroch and its transportation across the galaxy for use in ending the war against the civilisation known as the Emissaries in which the Shoal have been engaged for centuries.

The name Mos Hadroch has faint echoes of Frank Herbert’s Dune series but Gibson’s is a more straight forward action adventure story with twists, turns and betrayals aplenty, not to mention novae, space battles and murder, though there seemed to be a bit less violence than in the two previous volumes. All this is grist to the Space Opera mill which Gibson is grinding. But some of his characterisation runs up against a problem common with SF which deals with humanity in altered states. For example, Nancy Kress’s Beggars In Spain has humans who no longer need to sleep and are said to be more intelligent as a result. However their behaviour and actions are not depicted as being so endowed.

Here, several of Gibson’s characters have machine implants in their heads but beyond being able to communicate with each other (and some spaceships) at distance their behaviour does not seem much different from that of “normal” humans, either in Gibson’s invented world or our own.

Empire of Light rounds off his trilogy nicely but Gibson still leaves the possibility of sequels.