I had never heard of Gary Gibson; I had never heard of this book; yet for some reason when I saw it in a local book store I felt compelled to buy it on a whim. Yeah, buying things on whims is akin to making darts out of twenty dollar notes, throwing them off a bridge and hoping they come back reasonably intact. And yeah, there are these things called libraries which allow you to read books such as these for free. But I got sucked in by impulse and by the blurb on the back:
For a quarter of a million years an alien race has been hiding a vast and terrible secret.
Dang. I’m hooked. I’m a sucker for elderly alien races and vast, terrible secrets. It goes on:
In the 25th century, only the Shoal possess the secret of faster-than-light travel (FTL), giving them absolute control over all trade and exploration throughout the galaxy. Mankind has operated within their influence for two centuries, establishing a dozen human colony worlds scattered along Shoal trade routes.
Intriguing. Even if the mention of trade routes brings to mind disturbing images of the cringe-worthy Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. Oh God, that movie’s insipid crawling foreword: “Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation…yawn…of trade routes to…snore…huh, what?…Naboo”. Make it stop already! If you’re a fan of this film please watch this. If you’re still a fan after watching that, then you are an idiot.
Anyway, blurb, you may continue:
Dakota Merrick, while serving as a military pilot, has witnessed atrocities for which this alien race is responsible. Now piloting a civilian cargo ship, she is currently ferrying an exploration team to a star system containing a derelict starship. From its wreckage, her passengers hope to salvage a functioning FTL drive of mysteriously non-Shoal origin. But the Shoal are not yet ready to relinquish their monopoly over a technology they acquired through ancient genocide.
Oooh, ancient genocide! I shelled out the cash. At least it doesn’t revolve around fucking taxation.
Before I get into the meat, it turns out this book is the beginning of a trilogy, the second of which — Nova War — has only just been published. Much of what seems to be unfinished in this book, therefore, has the capacity to be expanded upon. So don’t expect answers come the end (of either the book or this review).
I must confess that it took me two attempts to start Stealing Light.
It is not that the writing is bad, or that the story is boring. Gibson is an able wordsmith: more prosaic than poetic, aiming to have the imagery they suggest rather than the words themselves wonder the reader.
The opening few lines are certainly attention grabbing. (Although amidst an introduction comprising full sentences I almost got thrown out immediately with the incongruent elliptical sentence “Trying to take it all in.” I cannot articulate why it grated me, but it did. It probably is only because it is elliptical, and maybe I half expected a Microsoft Word green wavy incorrect grammar line to appear under it. Am I really being schooled by a bloated piece of software?) To Gibson’s credit, after the full-on introduction, he doesn’t relent on the action throughout the rest of the book. (And no further ellipses annoyed me.) Descriptions were clear, and I didn’t have a problem seeing Gibson’s vistas in my mind’s eye.
I value clarity in the words I am reading, even if the story itself is convoluted beyond imagination. Which brings me back to the reason it took me two attempts to begin Stealing Light: the chapters in the first half of the book are consistently non-linear, and because of this convolution I lost interest about five or six chapters in on my first attempt. The narrative jumped in time (and space) often. To help the reader, the chapters where the narrative jumps are headed with the relevant information, for example:
Standard Consortium Date: 03.06.2538
25 kilometres south of Port Gabriel, Redstone Colony
Port Gabriel Incident + 45 minutes
Or:
Redstone Colony
Consortium Standard Date: 01.06.2538
3 Days to Port Gabriel Incident
Or even just a location with no time:
Trans-Jovian Space, Mesa Verde
This I took to mean present day, even though some chapter headings added “Present Day” anyway.
Despite the labels, I managed to lose myself at times, frequently requiring me to oscillate between two or more chapter headings in an attempt to peg whereabouts I was in the story. Comparing the chapter headings was not always straightforward, as it involved checking between three or four pieces of information. And as can be seen above, often the information was ordered or labelled differently or just plain missing. I don’t mind non-linear narration, but I found this book’s beginning required a bit of effort on my part to keep track of the story. Oh my poor, feeble mind.
Fortunately, curiosity got the better of me (or maybe it was the fact that I’d bought the book, so I was damn well going to read it) and a week or so later I gave it another go. Helpfully armed with the conscious (and probably unconscious) memories of my first attempt, I made it through. And I am glad I did, because once past the labyrinthine beginning, things begin to get Big.
Big is probably the main reason I read science fiction, and in particular gravitate to space opera. Big is when your characters’ actions affect worlds and entire universes. The science fiction and fantasy genres lend themselves well to Big concepts. From JRR Tolkien’s Middle–earth to Frank Herbert’s human empire of the far future to JK Rowling’s hidden wizarding world the very best constructed worlds have a believability, or at the very least a self-consistency that is believable. Their characters and plots weave into those worlds in intellectually satisfying ways, and what the characters do affect the world, and vice versa, and you can see why.
World-building is where Gibson really shines in this book. His portrayal of the universe of the 26th century has a nice internal consistency and is rich enough to offer plenty of surprises throughout the book.
Despite writing in a field already rich with sentient starships, near-instantaneous travel and all other sorts of weird and wonderful technology, and managing to include most science fiction staples, Gibson at the same time renders them afresh and adds his own unique creations, from the grotesque bead-zombies to the mysterious giantkiller and nova-inducing weaponry to the…no, I’ve said far too much already. I’ll leave some things unsaid, waiting to be discovered by the reader.
Gibson’s characters are not built to quite the same standards as his world, although the protagonists are painted with more dimensionality than the antagonists. Stealing Light uses three main protagonists: two humans and one Shoal. The primary character — a human — is called Dakota Merrick. Merrick is a “machine head”, someone whose brain has been enhanced via advanced technology. This advanced technology includes improved computational capabilities, memory and, crucially for the story, the ability to communicate wirelessly (read “telepathically”) with any other entity with a similar interface, be it a run-of-the-mill computer, an interplanetary or interstellar ship, such Merrick’s Piri Reis, another machine head or even…no, I won’t spoil that one either.
The two secondary characters are the Iain-M-Banksian-named Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals, a Shoal who pops up everywhere that plot-important points occur (it is unlikely to be coincidence), and Lucas Corso, a xeno-data archaeologist (basically an historian interested in aliens).
Of the three, most time is spent with Merrick, and indeed most of the intertwined first part of the book deals with her via various flashbacks. The main flashback involves the infamous Port Gabriel Incident, which is a major turning point in Merrick’s character. By the time the book begins to get into its stride (the final third or so), you can see why Gibson spent so much time with Merrick’s backstory. (It’s just a more straightforward, less convoluted telling may have been preferable.)
Not much time is spent from Trader’s point of view. There are some tantalising views of the Shoal homeworld, as well as their social interactions and politics, but in the main, Trader appears at various points of the story almost as an adjunct, albeit an important one who has major influence on the plot. I trust things will become clearer as the trilogy progresses.
A considerable amount of time is spent with Corso: he is not presented as heroic in any great measure, but he is relatable. And even if his not-quite-cowardice can get annoying, he at least is credible.
Of the three, only Merrick seems to undergo much of an arc, from idealist through to independently-minded…I was going to say cynic, but I’m not sure that she is. Possibly she is more pragmatic come the end of the book. Corso is painted less thoroughly, and his arc is subtle, if indeed there is one. This being a trilogy, though, there is plenty of scope for him to grow or change (if he lasts that long!), and I hope Gibson uses that opportunity. Trader gets no arc, although is no less an interesting character because of that. Again, Gibson may use the remainder of the trilogy to take us inside Trader’s alien mind.
Of course, there are a number of minor characters, mainly the requisite villains. Gibson has tried to give plausible backgrounds to these antagonists so that they could see themselves as the heroes of their own stories, and up to a point he succeeds. However, for most of them, they are a little too cold and, despite being human, inhumane. They aren’t cardboard cutouts, because they do have believable motivations, but they are presented as is, with no discernible arc.
The most humane of the villains, Moss, is probably the most interesting from a story-telling point-of-view, as Gibson hands him enough motivation to give you the feeling that he could turn at any moment and help our protagonists. The other villains have only one thing on their minds, and you sense that nothing will change that. It does make for satisfying character deletions when their times come, of course. (I trust I’m not giving too much away when I say the villains generally meet bad ends.)
So now we come to why: why has Gibson written this story? What’s the point? As with most space opera, the point is not to superficially answer any big metaphysical questions. There may be a hidden meaning behind the trilogy that Gibson is ultimately going to write, but at the moment this is all just one big space adventure mystery.
So, rather than asking questions such as “what is our place in this universe?”, or “what does it mean to be human?”, Gibson follows the tried and true space opera route of asking concrete questions. Who are the Shoal? Why are they helping mankind? Yet, at the same time, why are they withholding FTL technology? What do Merrick, Corso and the villains have to do with this? What is Trader hoping to accomplish? Gibson’s 26th century political and religious creations (both human and alien) colour these questions with interesting side-plots, which feed into the actions of the protagonists and antagonists and help drive the main plot to a reasonable degree of satisfaction. Anyone looking for a treatise on the human condition is going to be disappointed. Anyone looking for a mystery thriller with some intriguing ideas shouldn’t be.
Being the first book in a trilogy, the end does not tie everything up, and some readers may be a little disappointed with the abrupt conclusion of the book, especially given the fantastically wild ride Gibson conjures up in the final hundred or so pages, which is reminiscent of Arthur C Clarke or Greg Bear at their awe-inducing best.
But that swift ending has only made me more inclined to want to finish the overall story. I, for one, will be reading Nova War, and hoping that the end of that book leaves me wanting for the final part.
