The Martian General's Daughter

February 11, 2008
Despite its pulpish title, this erudite and intriguing novel is more in the tradition of Robert Graves than Edgar Rice Burroughs. By the 23rd century, when a nanotech plague has crippled the world’s hardware, much of the northern hemisphere is under the mostly capable and benevolent control of the U.S.-descended Pan-Polarian Empire. But Emperor Mathias the Glistening is dead, and the empire is in the hands of his increasingly psychotic son, Luke Anthony. The balance of power is controlled by Gen. Peter Black, a former sergeant who rose from the ranks to lead the imperial armies. Judson (Fitzpatrick’s War
) chronicles the last glories of the empire as viewed by Black’s illegitimate daughter, whose own rise from unwanted embarrassment to valued adviser and aide parallels her father’s career. The story might be familiar to today’s readers from the film Gladiator
, but the parallels it draws between Roman and American cultures are both perceptive and disquieting.

April 1, 2008
The Pan-Polarian empire is like Rome with some contemporary flavor and futuristic technology. General Peter Blacks illegitimate daughter Justa tells a tale of imperial crack-up that starts when her father is recalled from Mars by an emperors fall, and an old associate tries to convince him to declare himself emperor. Justa then recalls the old emperor, Mathias Anthony, and his vicious, decadent heir, Luke Spacious Anthony, thereby giving the fall of empire a human focus. Peter Black tries to become political to save his family and the dregs of the empire he once loved. Luke Anthony steadily becomes more lunatic, heralding the end that the frontier battle with China and the nano-infestation of the empires ancient tech also presage. Another general, far more ambitous than Black, aims to declare himself emperor of the post-collapse wreckage. Judsons handling of the fall of empire is most remarkable, given the slimness of the volume, and in Justa he forges a character compelling enough to keep readers from getting lost in the detail.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)