Greetings. My name is
Nathan and I have been a Puppy since the initial Campaign to End Puppy Related
Sadness. In addition to being a Wrong Fan,
I have been a chemist, a satellite controller, and an office drone. I’ll also add failed writer and unrepentant
bookworm to that list. Thanks to an
English literature course in college, I tend to read books with an eye on how
different works shape each other. Think
of the approach as a grown-up version of TV Tropes without the obsessive need
to pigeonhole every little thing into a pithy phrase.
But enough about me.
On to Nethereal. There will be spoilers.
***
Chapter 1: Navkin lays in bed with Shan, unable to
sleep. She has sedated Shan and waits
for the venom to take effect. At an
opportune moment, she steals away to work on Shan’s warded safe. Using her Workings, she defeats the
protections and cracks the safe. Shan
confronts Navkin, and using his own Working, tries to kill her using the same
forces used to propel spacecraft between planets, but a monster mauls him to
death before he can complete his spell.
Navkin leaves with the contents of the safe.
The first chapter introduces us to Navkin, a Steersman,
thief, and major viewpoint character for the rest of the novel. We also first see the Clarke’s Law magic
for Nethereal in the Magi and
Steersman, whose ranks include Navkin and Shan.
Using wizardry for space travel is not a new concept, but it identifies
Nethereal’s universe as a spiritual one instead of the materialism of hard
science fiction. It is too early to
determine if the Workings of the Steersmen are soft magic, like that used by Tolkien,
or the hard,
rules-based magic of Sanderson.
As you read on, remember the Gen, a despised people, and the
monster at the end of the chapter.
***
Chapter 2: On the planet of Tharis, Teg Cross, swordarm
for space pirate Jaren Peregrine, travels across fields of ash in a drifter
car. A sandstorm forces him to seek
shelter, where he sees an ominous thin man in a suit and mirror-black shoes standing
out in the wasteland. The storm passes,
and so does the thin man. Spooked, Teg
arrives at Sojourner’s Cut to fence stolen goods for his captain. After making the arrangements for the
exchange of goods, he is knocked-out from behind by an unseen assailant.
Teg’s mind wanders during his trip across the ash, providing
some key world-building exposition. The
Steersman’s Guild is further developed as enforcing an ironclad monopoly on the
ether needed for space travel. Jaren
Peregrine flaunts this monopoly while he gathers men and material for a revolt
against the Guild on Tharis. The cosmology
of Nethereal appears in the terms Cardinal
Spheres, Middle Stratum, and Nine Circles, which invoke both the Nine Worlds of Norse myth
and the Nine
Circles of Dante’s Inferno.
The thin man is eerily reminiscent of the Men in Black. Gamers might be forgiven for thinking of the thin men from XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
***
Chapter 3: Near the end of his voyage from Mithgar,
Marshal Malachi prepares to assume the post of Guild minister of Tharis. During the briefing from the outgoing
minister, Malachi confronts him with information linking the minister to
smuggling. Malachi also insinuates that
the minister’s support of piracy led to Shan’s death. The real quarry, however,
is Jaren Peregrine’s band of space pirates.
Malachi blackmails the minister into helping break the piracy ring.
Cultured, competent, and Machiavellian, Malachai is the
youngest Master Steersman in the Guild. Discworld’s Havelock Vetinari
and Honor Harrington’s
Victor Cachat would be proud. I
expect to see reverses in the fortunes of Jaren’s pirate crew, beyond whatever
trouble Teg is currently in.
Jaren’s reputation grows, chapter by chapter. Not only is he a smuggler and a
revolutionary, the Guild actually considers him a threat as the Gen pirate is charismatic
enough to rally supporters to his cause.
Rebellion is now certain on Tharis, but we have yet to see if Jaren’s
strategic acumen matches his charisma.
The name Mithgar confirms the influence of Norse myth on Nethereal. Since each of the Norse Nine worlds is the
home of its own people, I expect to see more alien races besides the Gen to be
revealed. Also introduced is the myth of
Zadok and Thera, a pair of father and daughter gods eternally annihilating and
transforming into each other. Nethereal is a spiritual universe where
the supernatural is normal. It would be
wise to pay attention to the myths.
***
Chapter 4: Navkin flees from the scene of her
crime. Old memories of captivity,
escape, and her involvement with the Peregrine family resurface. She returns to the pirates’ den and reports
to Jaren. Navkin has obtained the
coordinated for a weapons cache from Shan’s safe. Jaren intends to use the contents to equip an
army against the Guild. But first Navkin
must tend to Teg, who was shot in the back at the end of Chapter 2. During the treatment, Jaren interrogates Teg
about the trip to Sojourner’s Cut, including the thin man in black.
Navkin is old, at least a hundred years old. During that time, she has served in turn as rescuer,
mother, and sister to Jaren. Her escape
from the Guild kicked off the chain of events that led to Jaren having the
means –and the ship- to take revenge on the Guild. At this time, it is not certain if her long
life is due to Guild magic or the technology of the Cardinal Spheres. She is also a conventional medical expert. I expected her to use her Workings to heal
Teg, not antibiotics.
We meet Jaren for the first time. With waist-length red hair and a long tan
coat, he resembles the shaggy-haired space captains of the golden age of anime
space opera. Firefly fans might also notice that his coat is kind of a brownish
color. Jaren is half Gen, and the
last of a race genocided by the Guild during in war that was long over before
Navkin was born. He possesses the
intensity and bloody-mindedness of his Gen parentage. His internal dialogue reflects this, focusing
solely on the strategy, logistics, and rage required for revenge.
***
Chapter 5: The captain of the freighter Sunspot
confronts his mysterious recluse of a passenger, Van Mordechai. Since Mordechai boarded the ship, crew and
passengers have been vanishing at an alarming rate. Viewing the unsettling Mordechai as a jinx,
the captain wants to kick him off at the next port instead of continuing the
voyage to Tharis. Later, the captain
awakes from a nightmare of his dying crew.
Life support is gone. He reaches
for the lights but grabs a bitterly cold blade that shrivels his arm. Muttering about murder and mutilation,
Mordechai confronts the captain about broken promises. He disappears, leaving the captain alone in
the dark…
This chapter is one filled with implied horror, and is better
experienced than summarized. That said,
Thera’s star, around which Tharis orbits, is drawing a strange group of
people towards it. Perhaps this is a
sign that the gods of Nethereal play
an active role in human events.
***
Chapter 6: At the pirate’s den, Teg goes to fetch Deim,
the backup Steersman for the Shibboleth,
Jaren’s ship. Deim awakens, but before
he leaves for duty, he performs the morning rituals required of a devotee to
Thera Souldancer. Afterward, the two of
them board the Shibboleth, a black
frigate with swept wings. Inside, they
join the rest of Jaren’s crew as they plan to recover the weapons cache.
Every space pirate needs a spaceship. Jaren’s Shibboleth
has a passing resemblance to Grumman’s X-29. Its name also comes from a story in the Old
Testament, found
in Judges 12. Suspected fleeing
soldiers hiding among the Israelites were forced to say the word shibboleth. If the foreigners could not say the word
correctly, they were slaughtered. The
last member of a massacred race has named his spaceship after a massacre of
hidden people. This is also not the
first point of resonance with the Old Testament, as Malachi and Mordechai are
names found within.
Deim’s faith is also significant, both in treatment and in
plot. It is an odd faith in a goddess
who has abandoned her universe, but Teg treats it as worthy of respect. Science fiction tends to treat religion with
contempt, and fantasy is littered with plots that can be summed up as “Our god
is an evil bastard. Let’s kill him.” It is refreshing to see a depiction of faith
rooted in the ideas that it is real and it might actually be good. As for how it relates to the plot, well, as
the sergeants used to say in classroom training, you will see this again.
As predicted, other alien races besides the Gen were
mentioned.
***
Six chapters down, sixty to go. Since the next chapter begins an action
sequence, I will pause here. Feel free
to post your own observations in the comments below.
