A Son of the Rock

Solaris, 2014, 384 p.

This book is dedicated to Jack and Katrina Stephen. Those of you who know me will realise how pleased that makes me.

Janisha Chatterjee, daughter of an Indian Father and (deceased) English mother, is on her way back from England – where she is training in medicine – to her father’s deathbed when the airship in which she is travelling is brought down by Russian artillery fire. For this is India in 1925, and the Great Game is still afoot. Even though the Great War of our era does not seem to have happened the Russia contesting with the British Empire is Communist. China is also involved though only in the background here.

The Greater Game of the title concerns the prisoner on the airship, a creature known as a Morn, who saves Jani from the Russians mopping up after the attack. He gives her a coin and her entanglement in the plot follows. Other viewpoint characters are Durga Das, a priest of Kali, who is searching out the coin for reasons of his own, and Lieutenant Alfie Littlebody of the British Army, tasked by his superiors to spy upon Jani.

Echoes of Brown’s Bengal Station trilogy are never far away, this is India after all. But this is also steampunk. The wonder material Annapurnite not only powers superfast trains and airships but also weapons to keep the Russians and Chinese at bay; in a James Bond film-like touch Littlebody is given a photon blade and a Visual Camouflage Amplifier, both of which come in handy. There is also a mind-reading device. Oh and a Mechanical Man and even bigger mechanical elephant. And this is before we get beyond steampunk to the parallel worlds and the threat to humanity from the Khell.

The pleasure of this is in the journey. The author piles on the jeopardy and the intrigue and handles the politics of the British presence in India well – from both sides. Despite the steampunk trappings this comes out as a very Eric Brown type of story, if not quite reaching the heights of his The Kings of Eternity then less pulpy then the Bengal Station series. If Littlebody is a bit of a twit and Jani’s childhood companion Anand perhaps too cloying, Jani is engaging enough. And there is ample scope for a sequel (which I understand is in the works.) I’ll look forward to it.