A year ago, I reviewed Shadow Captain, the second part of this trilogy of Space Pirates stories, which made my ‘Best of’ list for 2019. With the arrival of the third book in the series, does it still hold water?
There are clearly changes afoot with this third book. Whereas the first book Revenger is told from the perspective of pirate captain Arafura Ness (aka Fura) and Shadow Captain from the perspective of her sister, Adrana, in Bone Silence the narrative is mainly third-person focused, and this means that with a wider perspective the novel can look at the bigger issues that have been hinted at in the earlier books.
We have been gradually told previously that the thousands of worlds of the Congregation have been through a series of boom and bust cycles over thousands of years. Known as Occupations, there is evidence that there had been twelve before and this has led to the baubles – secret sources of objects from previous Occupations – which the pirates spent their time finding and looting, if possible.
As the characters discovered in Shadow Captain, a number of events are happening that suggest that the Congregation may be heading towards the fall of civilisation in the Thirteenth Occupation. More importantly, it is conceivable that the Revenger crew may have even inadvertently hastened the decline. Their discovery that a mysterious object exists that might explain the origin of the Congregation, have led to the creation of the baubles and may even be something that is connected to what happened with quoins (the interplanetary currency) at the end of Shadow Captain. Much of Bone Silence is about the journey to this object.
As if this wasn’t enough to put the crew into hiding, Adrana and Arafura are now being pursued by a fleet under the leadership of psychopath Incer Stallis who are determined to hunt them down as justice for their crime. To monitor communications and stay hidden, at the beginning of Bone Silence the crew attempt to buy a new ‘Bone’, that weird Alien skull used to communicate in some sort of secret neural network, before travelling on to the mystery object.
At the same time, they have to avoid the fleet searching for them, whilst not giving away their objective. They find themselves now recognised as criminals across the planets because despite their not knowing what they did to make it happen in Shadow Captain, the crew of the Revenger find at the beginning of Bone Silence that they are being blamed for the universal devaluation of the quoins, which has caused bankruptcy and misery throughout the Congregation. It’s not going to be easy.
As the third book in a trilogy (so far, at least) Bone Silence shows how far these characters have come. Whereas Revenger was a deceptively simple ‘teenagers-on-the–run’ kind of story, Bone Silence shows us that there has always been an intriguing detail behind the main plot, and it is this that the book brings to light.
That’s not to say though that our main characters are pushed to the background. In Bone Silence much of the story is how Adrana and Fura become competent adults, able to bond with a growing set of crewmates and working together in times of peril as well as deal with the difficulties along the way. They have clearly become leaders, who have built a loyal (well – mainly loyal) team around them and are running a pirate ship as if they were born to it (even when they make mistakes.) The pirate leaders are some distance away from the teenagers we saw back in Revenger.
This is further confirmed when the two Ness sisters end up running two ships in an attempt to mislead the fleet and avoid Incer Stallis. Adrana has to take command of a ship they pirated, the Merry Mare, whilst Fura continues to run Revenger and her crew guided by Paladin, their family robot who is a relic from the Twelfth Occupation. They have to make difficult decisions and deal with life-changing choices that reflect their transition into adulting. By the end of the novel the sisters’ transformation into adults is complete and their future beyond space captaincy just beginning.
Alastair in his acknowledgements at the end of the book writes “I am, for the time being, done with the Ness sisters” and this seems the right decision to make. As much as it would be interesting to see further, there’s enough in Bone Silence for many readers to be satisfied to leave it there. I must admit that I wasn’t entirely convinced by some of the answers to the universal questions at the conclusion, but they do draw things to an end.
There is scope for other stories and other ideas to be pursued should Alastair or his publishers wish to do so, but if this is the end of our journey with Adriana and Fura, then the distance travelled by the Ness sisters over the three books, taken as a complete story, is impressive. If you’ve enjoyed the journey so far, Bone Silence should not disappoint.
Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds
Published by Gollancz, January 2020
604 pages
ISBN: 978 0 575 09067 5
Review by Mark Yon
I’ve just finished the trilogy, and it’s been a long time since any universe captivated me as much as the Congregation does. That having been said, I’m not sure that the answers provided at the ending to Bone Silence fully satisfy. For example, if, as the book suggests, the Skulls are not truly alien, then what exactly are they? And if we learn what begins the Occupations, what mechanism is it that ends them?
Hi Joshua.
Which may be the point, I guess – what if the answers to our questions lead to more questions? I quite like the fact that not everything is neatly tied up at the end. As I said in the review, there is scope for other books that might examine/answer some big questions – but Alastair’s not guaranteeing anything.