This debut novel reminded me of older Space Opera, but it is a lot of fun.
Our teller of the tale is space pilot and ex-soldier Jane Kamali (though her name is not known for most of the book.) She lives in a galaxy where The Pulse, a seemingly burst of electromagnetic energy, has travelled across the known worlds.
To most people, (but not Jane), the cause of The Pulse is unknown, but is a secret only known to a few. The consequences of it though are wide-ranging. The effects have varied from planet to planet. Some planets have been knocked back to a semi-feudal state, others not affected at all. Generally, the radiation left behind by the Pulse renders much equipment useless if it is left exposed.
Jane is originally from the Justified sect and now, for reasons that will be told through the book, works for the mysterious Sanctum. Her job is to travel from planet to planet, extracting children who have special gifts (such as telekinesis), and then take them back to Sanctum to get them to help prepare for an apocalypse-to-come.
At the start of this story, Jane and her AI sentient spacecraft, Scheherazade, are in the process of extracting teenage Esa, who has been shown to have telekinetic powers on a frontier planet. However, Jane is not the only person trying to get to Esa. Soon after her arrival on the planet they find that other aliens, the Pax, arrive with the same objective. Jane escapes with Esa and with the help of Alexi54328 (also known as Preacher), a semi-mechanical Barious, they get off-planet.
Whilst on their way to dropping Esa off, Jane & Scheherazade intercept a distress message from Marus Lonustan, a fellow Sanctum worker who has information vital to Sanctum. They retrieve Marus, who is gravely injured and in a coma. To help Marus get better, they reluctantly enlist the assistance of Javier Ortega, despite a major fall-out in the past, and after a battle with the Pax at a space station and space pirates at a radio transmitter, return to Sanctum.
The bad news they bring is important. Sanctum, for over one hundred years hidden, has been located by the rather Borg-like Pax, who are now sending a large space fleet to destroy the base and enslave the people there. There will be one large battle to determine the future of the galaxy.
Sound familiar? Reading that summary, a hardened regular Space Opera reader may recognise elements of the story as familiar. Fast spaceships, nasty aliens, talkative AI, big battles… it is pretty obvious that the author is a fan of Star Wars, Alien and perhaps Firefly, if not Westerns like The Magnificent Seven.
That may be enough for many readers. However, The Stars Now Unclaimed, to its credit, takes these familiar tropes and uses them to make a fast-paced, great kick-ass adventure story. Unlike some other books I have read recently that use the usual tropes and no more, this one does bring something new to the table as well as a degree of familiarity. For example, though not entirely new (I’m sure Star Trek: Generations may have had something similar) I liked the idea of the Pulse, and the fact that it seems to work at different levels and in different ways was a nice touch (if perhaps scientifically improbable and a tad convenient.)
It also helps that the book recognises its roots and hearkens back to the basics of the genre that go all the way back to the 1930’s. Whilst it’s not quite Firefly’s “Western in Space”, the fact that there are isolated worlds, creating separate frontier-planets, reminded me greatly of the sf-exploration novels of the 1950’s and 60’s. There’s also a nice sensawunda here in the creation of different places, spacescapes and alien races. Drew introduces lots of races here to look at, from the lizard-like Tyll to the Alien-ish feral Reint, and the Terminator-like Barious. A council meeting of Sanctum feels like an alien United Nations (except they rarely are united!) and creates a lot of scope for future stories, should the author wish it.
There will be, I’m sure, lots of readers who will talk about the story not being scientific, with fights with laser beams and planetary cannon being unlikely and the unfeasibility of Death Star type bases mentioned, but that’s not what we’re reading for. We’re really reading about the characters and the jeopardies they get themselves into, and their interpersonal relationships. And it is these that get us through to the end.
Slightly on the downside, the fact that the narrative is based on the perspective of only one person means that the troubles they have, grim as they are, mean that the lead character is never really put at risk of death, though admittedly they come darn close. (Again, many readers will expect that, I suspect.)
There is also the issue that such focus creates in that, in order to get the bigger picture, Jane seems to have to get around and do an awful lot for one person – for example, to begin with she is a cracking space pilot leading the charge against enemy craft, later she’s part of a platoon fighting aliens in a nuclear reactor, and then she’s tackling ground-troops almost singlehanded, followed by being a key player in a vital spaceship raid. At times it does make you wonder a little what the rest of Sanctum were doing…
And whilst there were times when the odd convenience occurred, the odd plot-hole appear and it felt a little like things were being moved from one set piece to another or ticked off a list, there’s enough positive energy and charisma to maintain momentum throughout and forgive the minor issues. It could actually be a little too long at times, with one battle following the next in quick succession.
But, I quibble. This is not the sort of book to analyse in detail and overthink. Instead it must be said that, overall, The Stars Now Unclaimed is a blast from the start. For all my moans, great characters, impressive world-building and lots of big battles are probably what any Space Opera fan will wish for. Don’t think about it too deeply, but the ride is great.
Perhaps most pleasingly, there is a move towards a fairly definite resolution at the end, though (of course) the story can be continued. I’m sure more could be told about this galaxy should the author wish it.
I’d personally love to read more.
The Stars Now Unclaimed is one of this year’s most fun debuts for me.
Chapter One extract here: https://www.torforgeblog.com/2018/06/11/excerpt-the-stars-now-unclaimed-by-drew-williams/
The Stars Now Unclaimed by Drew Williams
Published by Simon & Schuster, August 2018
448 pages
ISBN: 978 1 4711 7111 6
Review by Mark Yon
I read it and loved it!