JAMES SA COREY The Mercy of Gods. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The team that is James SA Corey – author of The Expanse – delivers the first instalment of an epic new science fiction series.
Lovers of good science fiction will be aware of the name James SA Corey. It is the pen name of Ty Frank and Daniel Abraham who, as a pair, have been responsible for one of the most epic and influential space opera series of the last decade – The Expanse. Over nine volumes, The Expanse created and played in a complex and dangerous world, always anchored by a core cast of loveable, relatable, flawed characters. Following the end of both The Expanse book series and its excellent TV adaption (which both authors worked on), James SA Corey returns with the first book in a new series. The Mercy of Gods, clearly marked as Book One of the Captive’s War, is still space opera, but in a very different register to The Expanse, and dealing with different historical analogies.
The Mercy of Gods opens with a human settlement on the world of Anjiin. Humans arrived on Anjiin three and a half thousand years before – ‘why they had come there … was lost in the fog of time and history’ (although readers of The Expanse may have a theory or two). Despite the underlying biology of Anjiin being incompatible with carbon-based life, humans and their animals and plants have survived and thrived. The Mercy of Gods opens with a research group that has made a breakthrough in combining the two very different biologies of Anjiin. But right from the opening epigraph, which refers to the conquest of Anjiin, readers are keyed into the overall arc of this story, which is not about research but one of conquest and resistance. Similarly, portents and foreshadowing fill the first few chapters:
Later, when he stood in the eye of a storm that burned a thousand worlds, he’d remember how it all started with Else Yannin’s hand on his arm …
In this first section of the book, readers are introduced to the many members of the research group – in particular team leader Tonner, his girlfriend Else, and Dafyd, a well-connected research assistant carrying a torch for Else. While the team’s political and social struggles come to seem irrelevant in the face of an alien invasion, these pre-existing issues and relationships do come to play a part in the narrative as it progresses. This is because the invading Carryx make use of all of the species they conquer and they take the team, and other research groups, to another planet where they are put to work on a project to combine incompatible biological systems.
This is where The Mercy of Gods takes a very different turn to The Expanse. While there were plenty of indications of alien life, The Expanse focused on humans. In The Mercy of Gods there is a myriad of alien species, most of them subjugated by the Carryx:
Rak-hund that had murdered people in the invasion. Soft Lothark jailers from the ship … A flock of hand-sized globes that floated and swam through the air in a chorus of ticking … A thing that looked like someone had crossed an ape with a crow … A thin black animal that could almost have been a dog, but with a mouth that opened vertically set between far too many eyes.
And most of the action is set in a massive alien structure on an unnamed planet:
Outside the big window, the sky was turning a ruddy orange. The huge arcs of alien structure, one part building and two parts the bones of strange gods, glittered with a million other windows like theirs. The ziggurats that marched along the curve of the planet, poking their sullen bronze heads up above the clouds, were a cityscape twisted by nightmare, starkly beautiful but vast enough to induce vertigo.
But even among all this strangeness and wonder, Corey sticks to what they do best – putting the human protagonists and their relationships at the centre of the narrative. Corey showed their capacity to deliver a complex found-family story in The Expanse. This is far from the same. There are family-like relationships here, but readers will not get the comfort of the central crew of the Rocinante. The characters in The Mercy of Gods have been taken from their lives and placed under extreme pressure; they are essentially prisoners of war in a completely alien environment run by rules they do not understand. They come together when they need to, but also betray each other depending on their view of a situation. But they still have complex relationships and manage to keep their sense of themselves and their sense of humour:
Campar leaned his head close, his voice low and conspiratorial. ‘I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.’
Because in the end this is a war story and an exploration of what happens to people in a forced labour camp.
Life went on. That was the terrible thing. They were ripped out of their world, their lives, their sense of who and what they were. Their history. They were killed, or made to watch the people they loved die. And then, at some point, they were hungry. Thirsty … The slow, low pulse of being alive kept making its demands no matter what. However bad it was, however mind-breaking and strange and painful, the mundane insisted on its cut.
Corey explores the different ways in which the humans react – whether it is focussing on the work, or developing new relationships, or plotting a suicidal revolution, or trying to play the system to their advantage. Into this mix Corey throws another common war story trope – a spy from a race that has been successfully fighting the Carryx and has been gathering information to help in that war by hiding among the humans.
The foreshadowing at the beginning of the book, and in many of the epigraphs, is important because very little is resolved by the end of The Mercy of Gods. And while there is upheaval on the horizon, it is unclear how this small band of plucky humans will even survive, never mind succeed. By the time the book concludes there has been plenty of incident, character development and action but those hints of the future seem a very long way from fruition. Readers are in good hands though, as Corey clearly knows where this narrative is ultimately going. All of these elements make The Mercy of Gods an excellent introductory volume to The Captive’s War, which feels like it will be a long-running and fascinating series.
James SA Corey The Mercy of Gods Orbit 2024 PB 432pp $34.99
Robert Goodman is an institutionalised public servant and obsessive reader, who won a science fiction short-story competition very early in his career but has found reviewing a better outlet for his skills. He was a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards for eight years and reviews for a number of other publications – see his website: www.pilebythebed.com
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