Deep Black is the much-anticipated sequel to one of my favourite SF books in recent years, Artifact Space (review HERE.)
I had high hopes for this one. In my review of Artifact Space, I said that “Artifact Space made my inner Spacer beam. It starts fast but held my attention throughout, bringing new ideas to traditional SF. This is a paean to all the old SFnal tropes of old but with a brand spanking new upgrade. I couldn’t put it down. Simply brilliant and easily one of my books of the year.”.
The general plot up to here is fairly simple. Marca Nbaro has managed to illegally work her way onto the Athens, one of the city-sized Greatships from the Directorate of Human Corporations (DHC) that travel along a trade route from City to Trade Point.
In Artifact Space when the Greatship New York is destroyed, the DHC comes under threat, by the PTX, a group of renegades determined to stop their monopoly of trade and destroy the DHC. There is a battle between the Athens and the PTX who are determined to hijack the Athens, but it is repelled by Marca and the rest of the Athens crew.
Marca also finds herself meeting the Hin, a starfish-like, nitrogen breathing alien species that is happy to trade xenoglas with humans. It is the first human-Starfish direct contact in over 200 years.
Deep Black picks up immediately where Artifact Space finishes. (And yes, even with my brief summary you would be best reading that book first before this one.) SPOILER WARNING: As a result, there are spoilers about the first book in this review of the second.
In Deep Black the Athens finds herself becoming more militaristic as the Greatship manoeuvres into less known space – the Deep Black of the title. This is to find and destroy the renegades who attacked the DHC before, but also to follow the Hin.
Now a hero of the Battle of Trade Point, Marca Nbaro now continues to juggle all the elements of her life – new technical innovations, aliens and hostile humans, manage to cope with management status, develop a relationship with a boyfriend and cope with her own feelings of inadequacy and incompetency. She’s also coming to terms with the use of a neural lace, which as her skills develop allow a better link to Morosini, the ship’s AI and gives her an advantage in combat.
But in-between the battles there are also long stretches of time, often involving manoeuvring along the trade route. There’s less planet-hopping and more time simply in an enclosed environment on the ship this time. Much of the plot then becomes about what to do when in-between engagements in this restricted environment. Frankly, there’s not a lot of variety in what you can do here, although Miles does well to keep Marca busy – perhaps too much so.
Others have mentioned it with Artifact Space, but Nbaro’s ability to be everywhere, doing everything is even more noticeable in this book. I must admit that Marca going in a seemingly-constant cycle, from fighting to training to directing the spaceship’s flight to practice and then to strategic meetings AND have visits to the boyfriend (and repeat in varying combinations) bordered on the edge of Marca being superhuman – it is understandable that Marca complaining all the time of being tired.
Whilst I accept that such times call for desperate measures, there were moments when I wondered what the rest of the crew do, and whether someone should step in and reduce Marca’s duties for the sake of her own mental health. I guess that this is a sign of having characters you care about.
Of course, the book is not just about Marca. I thought that the development of communication between the humans and the Hin was well done and unsurprisingly becomes an integral part of the plot.
Similarly, whilst it is not simple, the mechanics of combat in ultrahigh speeds has clearly had some thought. Miles seems to be following the science here and uses it well, even when my non-scientific brain found following the detailed mathematical processes and strategies a little perplexing! As an updating of the Captain Hornblower-type sea battles it works very well, so much so that I felt that there was even a David Weber/Honor Harrington kind of vibe, which some readers will appreciate.
I also thought that it was interesting to see how much of the action is controlled by computer, although it is understandable. Miles drops in an element of uncertainty in the plot by having Nbaro ponder over the trustworthiness of AI – is it genuinely working for the benefit of Mankind, or does it have a deeper, more sinister aim?
Taking the thought further, Nbaro at one point wonders whether the intense and complex fighting she and the Athens is involved in is actually nothing more than rival AI’s competing each other. Humans serving AI’s whims? Interesting.
But the main hook of the book is seeing the growth of Nbaro as a person aboard a near militaristic Greatship and watching her deal with every challenge she is given. Of course that is what she does, and I think why this book keeps you reading.
In summary, Deep Black is a worthy conclusion to what has come before. I must admit I didn’t find it quite as engaging as last time, being mainly set in an enclosed space and with some quite technical strategic explanation, but the relationships between humans and aliens, not to mention the combat scenes kept me reading. Despite my grumbles, it is still one of the best military SF books out there, and I think will certainly be one of my books of the year.
DEEP BLACK by Miles Cameron
Book 2 of the Arcana Imperii series
Published by Gollancz, August 2024
520 pages
ISBN: 978139 9615 037
Review by Mark Yon
