Valiant Dust

September 11, 2017
Baker has built his writing career primarily in the Forgotten Realms gaming franchise, and the hand of the dungeon master is heavy in this military SF swashbuckler with clunky racial politics. In the year 3102, the galaxy unironically recapitulates 19th-century Earth politics: technologically sophisticated, multisystem “great powers” play colonial games with traditionally religious states racked by insurgencies. Sikander Singh North is a prince of Kashmir, vassal to the interstellar Commonwealth of Aquila. He serves as gunnery officer on the CSS Hector, a cruiser assigned to protect and evacuate Aquila’s citizens in the Gadiran system, which is dissolving into chaos. The Dremark empire is represented by the provocateur of that chaos, Otto Bleindel, who’s busily wresting control from Gadira’s current overlord, the Montréalais. The narrative is cratered with data dumps that add little to the plot and nothing to the notably weak characterization. Baker knows a lot about software but has little grasp of technology trends overall; for example, in the 22nd-century diaspora from Earth, he portrays Indians as technologically inferior to Europeans. Baker claims that citizens of the “cosmopolitan powers” ethnically “blended together long ago,” but if he believes he’s thereby eliminated Eurocentric ideas from his novel, he’s sorely mistaken. Agent: Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Associates.

There's nothing like military science fiction to challenge a narrator. Take, for example, this first audiobook in the Breaker of Empires series. Its privileged protagonist, Sikander North, comes from the colony of Kashmir (think India), and he must battle to earn his place on the CSS HECTOR, an Aquilian Commonwealth (think Britain) starship. The HECTOR is assigned to protect an Islam-based colony (Saudi Arabia) from an uprising, which is being aided by an agent of the Dremmish Empire (Germany). Brit narrator Steve West ably handles the many necessary accents (the HECTOR is staffed by natives of Aquila's many colonies) as well as the names of the exotic weaponry. Due to West's top-notch effort, the production rockets along--just what an enjoyable space adventure should do. D.E.M. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine