Helix Wars by Eric Brown

In Helix Wars, the follow-up to Eric Brown’s space opera Helix, the author returns to the fascinating world he created with a story set about two hundred centuries after the previous novel concluded. The majority of the characters from the first volume are historical figures, legends in the human settlement of New Earth. At the end of Helix, humanity was given one of the many worlds on the Helix and was tasked with being the Peacekeepers for all the worlds. Each world is inhabited by mostly enlightened and peace-faring races. The Builders, the ancient race of aliens who built the Helix, only invited advanced, peaceful races who are willing to relinquish thoughts of war to inhabit the myriad of worlds.

The novel focuses primarily on pilot Jeff* Ellis, a damaged character: his son died at a very young age prior to the events of the novel, his marriage is failing, and he is pining over a colleague. He’s just accepted a mission which will pair him up with said colleague, he thinks life might be on an uptick until his shuttle is shot down and he crash lands on the planet Phaedra. He is the sole survivor of the crash and the life he sees is truly alien. Here I thought Brown’s depiction of the alien landscape was quite fascinating, beautiful and horrific as both sides of the same alien coin.

Soon enough, Ellis finds himself caught in the midst of a conflict between the Phaedrans and their neighbors on the Helix, the Sporelli. The Phaedrans are healers, mystics of a sort, and one of their kind – Calla – heals Jeff. Well, not before he is partially consumed by and subsequently extracted from an alien that seems a hybrid of a giant caterpillar and a Venus flytrap. Jeff and Calla are pursued by the Sporelli, and separated and captured. Jeff’s crash also comes to the attention of the Mahkan, a race the Builders assigned as the Engineers of Helix whose responsibility it is to ensure the Helix does not malfunction. Specifically, the Mahkan Kranda pursues Jeff in the hopes of saving/rescuing him. As it turns out, Jeff is a friend of Kranda’s, he saved Kranda’s life prior to the events of the novel, and as a result, owes Jeff a life debt and is part of an alien race which switches genders over the course of its life.

While Helix Wars is very much Jeff’s novel, Brown provides the supporting characters, like Calla, with a trajectory of their own that is nearly as fascinating. Also part of the orbit of Jeff’s supporting characters is Kranda, from the alien race of Mahkan. Even though the Mahkan are engineers, there’s a proud warrior race feel to them as well. Jeff’s ex-wife is developed enough that her plight doesn’t bog down the overall plot, rather adds to it and comes around to the whole by the end of the novel. When Jeff and Kranda do meet up, Brown engages the characters in a lot of philosophical debates regarding death and the steps necessary to ensure their mission’s completeness. At times, Jeff came across a bit too stubborn in his stance in his debating with Kranda for plot purposes. With these three characters, Brown has given just a small glimpse of a myriad of potential races and worlds he could explore in the universe.

All told, Helix Wars is a very well-rounded novel, the characters were believable, the world(s) were fascinating, and the plot was like many of Brown’s novels (especially those featuring another Jeff), fast paced and just pure fun. I say this often on twitter, but readers could do much worse when looking for good, entertaining science fiction than picking up an Eric Brown novel. Though Helix Wars is indeed a sequel to one of the author’s most popular works, the plot and manner in which he reveals the world(s) is such that the novel can be read without having read Helix.

Brown brings the story of the war and Jeff’s adventure to a close in Helix Wars, the world he created in Helix and expanded here in its sequel nearly begs for more stories to be written or explored.

Recommended

Published by Solaris Books / Mass Market Paperback ISBN 978-1-7810-8049
September 2012 / 544 Pages
http://ericbrown.co.uk/
Review copy courtesy Solaris Books