Hodder & Stoughton, 2021, 508 p. Reviewed for ParSec 2.

This is the second in the author’s First Sister series, the first of which was reviewed in ParSec 1. The Solar System is divided between four political blocs, the Earth and Mars based Gean; the Icarii, settled on Venus and Mercury; the scotopic, gene-altered and usually put upon Asters, left with only the asteroid belt since combatant AIs known as Synthetics prohibit expansion further out in the system. The degree of catching up with the scenario required by anyone unfamiliar with the previous book is provided by some fairly noticeable early information dumping. The Gean and Icarii – usually at war – have only just contracted a ceasefire – mainly due to the actions of Astrid, formerly First Sister of the spaceship Juno but after the Gean takeover of that dwarf planet now First Sister of Ceres. Once more we see things from the viewpoints of both Astrid and of Icarii duellist Lito sol Lucius, but in addition this time we have two extra narrators, Lito’s sister Luciana, and his erstwhile duellist partner Hiro von Akira.

Astrid is on her way to Mars to attempt to persuade the Agora, the Sisterhood’s controlling council, to appoint her as Mother (head of the Sisterhood,) the previous incumbent having been assassinated in Book One. What she finds is corruption on a fairly large scale, with her familiar antagonist Aunt Marshae at the centre of it all. Hiro is now working counter to his Icarii origins but more particularly against his family. To assist their revolution Lito is tasked with rescuing an Aster asset from captivity while Luciana must steal information from the Akira family’s labs in order to produce a Genekey to undo Icarii genetic enhancements.

As an adventure story this is all fine, it is packed with incident and can be read for the thrills alone. But it is not without flaw. Chapters tend to end with a cliffhanger, which is not a weakness in itself, but with each repetition becomes a little more wearing. Astrid’s horror at the thought of girl orphans in care of the Sisterhood being handed over to serve in a brothel is more than a little strange given her history in the Sisterhood, whose members are required to provide sexual services to soldiers without demur; as she had been before her promotion to First Sister. (In this regard the deference shown by soldiers to Sisters of high rank is also odd, even if standing orders would probably mandate it.) Lewis’s use of the term ‘duellists’ for her Icarii military unit is a persistent nag. Yes, it conveys the idea of a pair of combatants; but here they work in tandem, not against each other. The more appropriate word, surely, which arguably would still evoke the required allusion, is ‘duallists’. Lewis also has a pronounced tendency to split infinitives. Compared to the previous book there is not much fleshing out of the scenario – a plus here is that the Synthetics finally come into the picture, albeit in a small way – but there is still the lack of resolution common to all middle instalments of series. Lewis’s twist in the final chapter, coming as it does more or less out of the blue, is perhaps a little too aimed at leaving the reader agog for the next book. Then, too, aspects of the prose in this one often betray signs of being written hastily. (There is a particularly convoluted acronym, AEGIS, the Agency for Ethical Guidance of Icarii Science.)

Lewis may believe her heart is in the right place. We are told, “It’s always the poorest who suffer the most in a societal tragedy,” and the Synthetic, Mara, says to Hiro, “‘I don’t think you can kill people and claim you’re doing so for peace,’” but there is the same apparent relish for violence for its own sake as in The First Sister, yet more gratuitously spilt blood and chopped heads, even while the fight/battle scenes remain somehow perfunctory, and unconvincing. Read for plot and intrigue though, and you may well be satisfied with The Second Rebel.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval later”/“within time interval” count: 21. Otherwise; “off of” “outside of” etc (many times; there is no need for the ‘of’,) “A darkened side room, what looks like a tiered lecture hall devoid of furniture” (that ‘what’ makes this read like one of Ernie Wise’s plays; ‘which looks’, or, ‘that looks’,) “none of them were on Ceres when it happened” (none of them was…,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “the rotation of Jupiter” (x 2, Lewis meant ‘the orbit of Jupiter’,) swaths (swathes.) “The gravity is lighter” (this is in a place remembered fron childhood, the gravity would be exactly the same. It is not even a contrast with where the character had just been, as it’s on the same planet.) “Nestled beneath the end table at my side are a selection of tattered books” (Nestled … is a selection of,) “The chaise lounge” (x 6! Not a casual mistake or typo then. Lewis must believe this how ‘chaise longue’ is spelled,) characters frequently refer to inhabiting the galaxy (since expansion beyond the asteroid belt is banned by the Synthetics this is overblown, they inhabit only the Solar System.) “Minutes pass like seconds” (context implies the opposite, ‘Seconds pass like minutes’,) “everyone is hurriedly boarding crafts,” (the plural of craft as in ships – sailing or space – is craft,) “get ahold of” (get a hold of,) “the majprity of the crew are happy” (the majority … is happy,) “I see that the podships launched from the Leander are closing in on us on the command screen” (I see on the command screen that the podships launched from the Leander are closing in on us,) “none of them answer” (answers,) “I clench my eyes as they come for me” (clench my eyes ? This eye-clenching appeared once more,) “A sudden movement in the corner of my eye” (wouldn’t the whole eye be moving, then? The usual formulation is ‘seen from an eye’s corner’,) “Nother Rue” (Mother Rue would seem more likely.) “The group of Asters scatter” (scatters,) “and I am once against sealed into” (once again.)

Another gift from Parsec digital SF magazine has landed on my doormat; Best of British Science Fiction 2021 edited by Donna Scott.

I reviewed Best of British Science Fiction 2020, also edited by Donna Scott, for ParSec 2 and will be posting that review here soon.

Wizard Tower Press, 2021, 345 p, £15.00. Reviewed for ParSec 2.

The pitch for this will have been straightforward enough. “English girls’ boarding school stories. On Mars.” Intriguing, perhaps hard to resist, promising an amalgamation of the teenage genre of chums and escapades and the Scientific Romance. Even if unacquainted with the precise inspiration (Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books, to the author of which this one is dedicated) the boarding school setting is surely well-known to most readers – though Mars may not be – liable to be greeted with enthusiasm for those with fond memories. Indeed, there are no fewer than ten encomia for the concept, from names recognisable and not, preceding chapter one.

To the Crater School, then, which occupies an old hotel on Mars on the shores of Crater Lake, built for tourists who never came and abandoned for years till the school was founded, situated beyond the end of the line, for which the nearest town, Terminus, at the hairpin junction – albeit via a cascade – of two canals, was named. The lake is home to merlins, mysterious and potentially dangerous Martian creatures (or perhaps, they too, like the humans, are imports; not all such background detail is fully sketched in) with a complicated life-cycle involving nymphs, naiads and imagos. (No, one of the girls corrects herself, the Latin plural is imagines.)

Add in that Mars is the furthest flung outpost of the British Empire of the Empress Eternal – a seemingly unaging Queen Victoria – recently engaged in a Great War with the Russia of a Tsar whose forces have captured both Martian moons, Deimos and Phobos, and glower down on the colonists using the telescopes the British were obliged to abandon, a steam driven funicular (which technically isn’t a funicular, do keep up,) not to mention an airship, and we have a mix to tease and entice.

A boarding school does of course embody the prime requisite of the children’s adventure story, the absence of parents, even if it is modified by the (only slightly) inhibiting existence of teachers, mistresses in this case. Parents, though, are a preoccupation of three of our characters, red-headed sisters Verity and Charm Buchanan whose artist mother has a mysterious secret to keep concealed but thought hiding them in plain sight at the Crater School while she went off on urgent business would be a good idea, and another new girl, Rachel Abramoff, separated, to her mind cruelly, from her twin Jessica, by parents who thought they should spend some time apart.

But three twins at the Crater School? Yes, because near identical Tawney and Tasha Miskin (like Rachel, of Russian origin) make up our quintumvirate of leads, though there is more than a passing role for the redoubtable Head Girl, Rowany de Vere.

Brenchley slightly updates this universe of aether ships, Great Game manoeuvrings and the truly indigenous sandcats when the Russians broadcast propaganda presented by a turncoat and using the call sign, Phobos calling. This is Phobos calling, but remains true to the times of Scientific Romance since boys are sent to public schools in England rather than kept on Mars. A somewhat odder inclusion is of farmers of Basque origin working the lands near the crater.

While not lacking in incident, the usual suspects of friendship, pluck and getting into scrapes, there is really little by way of plot except for the Buchanans being beset by Russian agents and Rachel’s campaign to be reunited with Jessica.

Despite Brenchley taking care also to embed allusions to Science Fiction (one of the pupils is named Pat Cadigan for example,) technically, since the Mars on display here is so unlike the one we know about in the real world, this ought to be classified as a fantasy, but being perhaps true to the (lack of) knowledge of Mars pertaining in the age when the schoolgirl tale was queen in that respect it can be given a pass. The introduction in the last few chapters of yet another girl, Pete, obsessed with steam engines, shrewdly amplifies the scope for sequels.

This is undeniably entertaining, if undemanding, reading, though there was a noticeable number of words or phrases irritatingly repeated in close proximity. For instance, “it was clear that” appeared in successive lines and there was a sentence beginning, “It was tolerably clear tolerably early on,” (was this sort of thing a habit of Brent-Dyer?) Using the spelling ‘mediaeval’ was a pleasing touch, however. In all though, while it will almost certainly delight fans of girls’ school stories there may not be quite enough Science Fictional content to elicit the same emotion in that audience. But they may be taken along by the ride.

Pedant’s corner:- “and even so: little cries of pain” (no need for that colon, a comma would do,) Miss Peters’ (Peters’s,) a Martian weed that is ‘something between animal and vegetable’ is described as ‘not alive’ (well; animals are alive, plants are alive, so something in between must also be alive,) “none of the part were wearing pioneer smocks” (none … was wearing,) “threatened to rise to a crescendo” (the crescendo is the rise!) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x2,) “who found to wit to mutter” (found the wit,) “‘we could all use a sandwich’” (is a USianism very unlikely to be uttered by a Victoria schoolgirl,) behooves (behoves.)