This is the second book in Simon R. Green’s Deathstalker series. It’s not quite as much fun as the first book; it kind of creaks along in places, and there are even more wild improbabilities than in the first. For example, much of the action takes place on the factory world Technos IV. (Or was it Technos III?) The Empire is building a factory there to outfit the Imperial Navy with a new alien space drive that’s much faster than anything else available. But Technos has this weather problem: the summers are hotter than hell, the winters are colder than hell, the springs are wetter than hell (and all of the animal and plant life goes berserk), and the autumns are nice only by comparison. Oh, and each season is only Two Days Long.

Technos wasn’t always like this—it seems that there’s a system of weather control satellites that were hacked by cyber-revolutionaries, causing the extreme weather patterns. Two hundred years ago.

This is what they call a Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot plot development.

• Couldn’t the weather control satellites have been fixed by now?
• Failing that, wouldn’t simply blowing them out of the sky yield improvements to the weather?
• It’s a big Empire—aren’t there better places to build a factory upon which the survival of the Empire might depend?

Now, the whole series is kind of spoofy; it’s meant to over the top and farcical in places, but the problem is that Green also tries to insert a little serious character development here and there, and the serious bits and the silly bits make for an uneasy brew.

All that said, I wasn’t expecting much of anything else; and there were some good bits too. Certainly, the book kept me reading.

Simon R. Green’s Deathstalker is the first in a lengthy series of very thick space operas, and it’s the first of his books I’ve read after his Eddie Drood that really succeeds on its own terms–which, admittedly, are improbable, highly-colored, action-packed, and loaded with mayhem.

Owen Deathstalker is the lord of the House of Deathstalker, one of the oldest houses in the galactic Empire.  The Deathstalkers have traditionally been great warriors, and Owen has been competently trained; but after his father’s death as the result of endless intrigues, Owen hunkers down in his Standing on Virimonde and studies history in between dallying with his concubine.  And then Empress Lionstone XIV declares him an outlaw, for no particular reason that’s ever explained, and every man’s hand is turned against him.  And every woman’s: the book opens with his concubine’s attempt to kill him and claim the bounty.

The book is full of all manner of things, including alien killing machines, gladiators, a plethora of engineered soldiers of various types, love, hate, betrayal, and a device that can blot out a thousand suns…and possibly bring them back.  There are lost cities, warriors lost in time, clones, espers, elves (the members of ELF, the Esper Liberation Front).  And there are a variety of surprisingly complex characters given the genre.  Green’s not Bujold, by any stretch (but who is?) and he doesn’t have the delightful goofiness of Brian Daley’s Hobart Floyt and Alacrity FitzHugh books, but Deathstalker is a lot of fun, and I’ve already picked up the next two books in the series.

A side note; those who don’t share my interest in religion can skip it.

I begin to think that Green is not only a Christian, but possibly a Roman Catholic as well.  Religion appears in this book only twice.  First, a wedding between two Great Houses is presided over by the Vicar of the Church of Christ the Warrior.  The Empress favors this Church, which has thereby become something like the official church of the Empire; and let me just say, it gives a new stridency to the term Church Militant.  It is described in terms which make it appear to be a descendant of the Roman Catholic Church we know, but the Vicar is anything but the Servant of the Servants of God.  Not a sexual predator, as clergy too often are in F&SF these days, but proud, haughty, ruthless, violent when crossed, and utterly lacking in any kind of charity.  I thought, “Humph.  Another bit of anti-Catholicism.  Oh, well.”  And yet, there’s that phrase, “Christ the Warrior”.  This is clearly a new thing.  And then, some time later, a man appears as a representative of the Church of Christ the Redeemer, and is instantly martyred. 

The thing is, neither of these characters are really essential to the plot.  Leaving them out would have shortened the book by maybe four or five pages, if that; and it’s a 523-page book. The Vicar is a character in an important scene, at least; the martyr could have been left out and not missed.  My conjecture is that by putting him in, Green’s attempting to play fair, to say, “Yes, I know the Church of Christ the Warrior has made a mockery of Christ’s teaching.”  Dunno.  I’d ask him, but the only address I can find is a snail-mail address in England.

As part of my on-going investigation of Simon R. Green, I picked up an omnibus of three of his early novels, Swords of Haven. The three books are essentially police procedurals sent in a fantasy universe.

The setting is the city of Haven, a place that vaguely reminds me of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar. The chief difference is that the city is governed by an elected council rather than a patrician. All three tales concern Hawk and Fisher, a husband-and-wife team, both captains in the City Guard. The feel is gritty and urban; think Victorian England with magic standing in for technology.

The first tale, Hawk and Fisher, is the least satisfying of the three. After a promising opening in which Hawk and Fisher find and put down a vampire that’s been terrorizing the city, it turns into a “country house” mystery (well, the house is in town, but “town house” mystery sounds silly) in which a candidate for the city council is murdered and one of his guests are responsible. Hawk and Fisher are on the scene, as they’ve been detailed to be the man’s body guards.

It’s a locked room mystery, and the gimmick—how the murder was done—is not bad. But I didn’t like the characterization, and I found my suspension of disbelief collapsing fairly often.

The second tale, Winner Take All, is better. It picks up shortly after Hawk and Fisher leaves off, when the duo are assigned to be body guards for yet another candidate. The election is imminent, and there’s a whole lot of full-body electioneering going on. By law, candidates are not allowed to have wizards on their staffs; but naturally enough, all of them do, complicating matters nicely.

The initial set up had me worried; it was a little too much like that of the previous book. And the characterization is still problematic; too many characters seem to do what they do because the plot demands it, rather than because it makes sense.

The third tale, The God Killer, is the most interesting. One of the features of Haven is the Street of Gods, where all of the city’s temples and churches are located. We first see the Street of Gods in passing in Winner Take All, but here it’s front and center. It’s the thing that most reminds me of Lankhmar, but Green’s Street of Gods is actually a more interesting place. First, the geography of the Street of Gods is variable; it’s as big as it needs to be to hold all of the temples, and its weather differs from that of the rest of the city. Second, the existence of the various gods is a material fact: they are magical “Beings” that feed on the worship of their followers and in return give them power. Those with many followers grow more powerful, and those with fewer fail and die; moreover they can be killed. Green’s basically following Terry Pratchett, which is amusing, as Terry Pratchett was himself following Fritz Leiber (Anhk-Morpork equals Lankhmar.)

But again, Green’s added a new twist. Hawk and Fisher are from another country, to the far north, and claim to have been raised as Christians. Moreover, as in Drinking Midnight Wine, the characters make a distinction between the Beings worshipped on the Street of Gods, and God who is the transcendent creator of all that is. (I’ve been unable to find anything on-line about Green’s religious beliefs, but I have to wonder if he’s a Christian.)

So, my overall assessment. Not bad; it’s been a rather fraught week, what with the Station Fire and all, and this book helped me pass the time pleasantly enough. The third novel in the set, at least, is genuinely interesting, and if Green still doesn’t strike me as a truly excellent writer, these were good enough that I’m willing to look up the remaining Hawk and Fisher novels (which are also available in an omnibus edition, Guards of Haven).

Simon R. Green has more faces than the village gossip. We know he’s not Jim Butcher; in Drinking Midnight Wine we find that he’s neither Neil Gaiman nor Charles de Lint, though not for lack of trying. I will say this for Green; he has guts. This is a more ambitious book than the others of his that I’ve read, and if he doesn’t quite pull it off there are nevertheless some good bits. There are also some truly awkward moments, some wooden expository speeches, and the occasional failed bit of comic relief. But I enjoyed it anyway.

It seems that there are two worlds, side-by-wide: Veritie and Mysterie. Veritie is our world; Mysterie is its magical twin. Normal humans live in Veritie; Power and Dominations and folks with a touch of magic live in Mysterie. Some few have a foot in both worlds.

Toby Dexter is a bookstore clerk who follows a beautiful woman through a door that wasn’t there before and finds that the world is far stranger than he had realized; and it’s up to him to keep it that way. More or less.

I’ve read a number of Green’s books now, and a number of them have this same feeling of being just a little more than he can handle; though it would appear that he can handle more now than he used to. They also seem to be based on a reasonably consistent set of metaphysical assumptions, in that Green, like C.S. Lewis, distinguishes between the transcendent immaterial Creator of All That Is, i.e., God, and a variety of material or immaterial Gods who are incredibly powerful but can be slain. Most fantasy authors these days seem to stick with the latter and leave the former out.

Anyway, if you like the urban fantasy shtick, this is a fun little book, despite its flaws.