The Shattered Skies by John Birmingham
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction at 12:00 on 21 December 2022
Head of Zeus, 2022, 509 p. Reviewed for ParSec 3.
While there are some scenes in this second instalment of Birmingham’s trilogy (for my review of the first see here) which feature Lucinda Hardy’s father Jonathyn, whose term in a debt defaulter’s prison on Batavia has been ended by the Sturm, the bulk of the text remains focused on the five main characters surviving from Book One, though four extra viewpoints also come into play: Sturm Captain Anders Revell, Sub-Commandant Domi Suprarto of the Imperial Javan Navy (whose organisation and command style seem to be modelled on that of the Japanese armed forces of the 1930s and 40s,) his superior, Imperial Volume Lord Juono Karna, plus Rinaldo Pac Yulin of the Yulin-Irrawaddy Combine. In the Natuna system the Javan and Combine ships of the latter three were running silent to weather a solar storm just as the Sturm attack on the Greater Volume’s zero point network occurred and so mostly avoided the fate of all those connected to it. Like Hardy, Suprarto finds himself unexpectedly in command after his officers’ brains were scrambled when they switched online again.
While the others, being adult, remain true to their earlier selves it is noticeable that Princess Alessia undergoes character development here in that she begins to blossom into her aristocratic heritage. Her tendency to use swear words does perhaps occur a mite quickly though. She drives most of the plot in this volume as, due to her revelation that her family maintained illegal and therefore secret engram vaults to restore their consciousnesses in case of the type of disaster which has just occurred, the occupants of the Defiant and Sephina’s new ship Arianne (named after her dead lover) set off to find such a cache at the space habitat called Lermontov in the Natuna system but first stop off at Descheneaux Station to rescue the few inhabitants and Armadalen Navy regulars who had not succumbed to the Sturm strike. Body strewn encounters ensue with the zombiefied but bloodthirsty remnants of humanity whose minds had been destroyed. (Why they do not turn on each other rather than seeking out “normal” humans is not explained. But then, of course, we would have had no gory battle scenes.) Hardy, though now a Commander, herself forms part of the rescue team, for which McLennan chides her as an unnecessary risk for a leader.
Hardy and McLennan put pressure on Princess Alessia to sign a declaration which would emancipate the many inhabitants of the Greater Volume who were de facto slaves. Despite the likelihood that if her family were to be revived they would declare it null and void she eventually agrees. This almost throwaway aspect of the book puts a gloss on our heroes’ determination to combat the Sturm. It smacks of a kind of desperation to show their cause is just. (Birmingham presumably intended this to stand comparison with another war during which an emancipation proclamation provided a higher purpose to its continuation. It doesn’t.) Alessia herself perceives later on that living conditions on Lermontov are harsher than she could have imagined. This is one more indication to the reader that the society for which her companions are fighting is probably not really worth defending.
As is common in second parts of trilogies there is a degree of marking time here. In particular the animosities the Javan Empire and the Combine have with the Armadalen Navy, even in the face of the advancing Sturm, take up most of the narrative.
Again we have an indicator of what may be Birmingham’s inspiration for the Sturm in that Pac Yulin (not the best example of a good guy it has to be said) says of them, “‘They do not just distrust the science. They despise and repress it.’”
In the climactic scene Birmingham plays a trick on his characters, and perhaps the inattentive reader. The logic of it was however implicit since early on in The Cruel Stars.
I suppose it is a defining feature of military SF but there is a degree of having and eating cake in describing scenes of mayhem and violence while insisting they are necessary. The Sturm are certainly monomaniacal and vindictively brutal to those with opposing views but Hardy, MacLennan, Sephina L’Trel and Booker are hardly less so.
There are nevertheless some pleasing grace notes. Intellect Herodotus’s interjection of, “‘I have no mouth and yet I must scream’” slightly misquotes Harlan Ellison, while the designation ‘SPY 7 sensor hooks’ may be an oblique reference to James Bond.
Again, the epilogue is a teaser for the next book in the trilogy. Despite the usual wallowing in carnage of the sub-genre and a tendency to overdo banter between his characters Birmingham has invested enough in them to make the reader persevere.
Pedant’s corner:- “he would have shook his head” (shaken,) “the conn” (always this spelling here. In The Cruel Stars it was spelled ‘conne’ but is usually given as ‘con’,) zero-point (elsewhere ‘zero point’.) “there were a couple of people like that” (there was a couple,) “less beatings” (fewer beatings,) “the hauler, which displaced less than one-quarter of the mass of Sephina’s luxury cruiser” (I am at a loss to see how a space-ship can displace any mass whatsoever. Unlike a boat, which displaces water, in space there is no material to displace. Why not just say ‘the hauler was only a quarter the size of Sephina’s luxury cruiser’,) sprung (x 2, sprang,) “‘We’re nae going to Earth’” (‘nae’ appeared like this several times. In the context of ‘not’ this should be, ‘We’re no’ going to Earth’ or more realistically, ‘We’re no’ goin’ tae Earth’,) “‘G’orn then, s’good for what ails you’” (That ‘r’ in ‘G’orn’ would not be there. He would have said, ‘Gaun, then’,) “H3 mines” (He3 mines,) “the dark maws of a dozen smaller hangars” (not ‘maws,’ these were not stomachs; they were mouths,) “Zaitsev Corporation” (elsewhere always ‘Zaistev’,) “bachelor party” (McLennan would have said ‘stag do’,) “half a millenia” (half a millennium,) “Muntions Sub-Intellect Number Six” (Munitions Sub-Intellect Number Six?) “the plane of the elliptical” (x 3, ‘the plane of the ecliptic’. An error like this somewhat undermines trust in Birmingham’s other astronomical terminology,) wracked (racked,) “3X normal” (3 x normal; as in ‘3 times normal’,) “none of them were protected” (none of them was protected,) “the castle atria” (there was only one, ‘the castle atrium’,) nannite (nanite,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech. “‘They’ll puts boots on the deck to take them’” (put.)
