Steampunk Firefly
Jun. 27th, 2012 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselDec 2011
Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding - Gollancz, 2010
* * * *
I have read one other Chris Wooding many years ago, which I thought was an interesting new presentation of some standard fantasy tropes. This one does the same for steampunk SF, but rather more successfully. The characters are engaging, the world is interesting and the plot is (mostly) coherent and enjoyable. My main real criticism is that there is nothing in the plot that requires it to be SF.
The set-up is essentially identical to that of Joss Whedon’s splendid but ill-fated TV series Firefly, which was clearly an inspiration. The Ketty Jay is a small-time airship captained by Darian Frey, a man with an extremely dodgy romantic past who employs a crew of social misfits including a demonologist, a young female navigator who really doesn’t want her background to become known, a classically laconic engineer, a doctor with a drink problem and two fighter pilots, one stupidly gung-ho and the other a nervous wreck whose only interest in life is his plane. Frey is offered a job which will make his fortune, and despite some obvious misgivings, he agrees. Hey, guess what? Things don’t go according to plan and Frey finds himself on the run with the forces of the empire and a pirate mercenary on his tail.
The above shows Wooding’s irritating tendency to build his characters on well-worn stereotypes and his plots on less-than-original precepts, but as with The Weavers of Saramyr there are some interesting new ideas. Airship technology is based on aerium, a lighter-than-air gas produced by crushing ore with electromagnets. I also liked the idea of trapping demons by using resonant harmonics. The crew all have Dark Secrets which predictably come out in the course of the story, but the flashback vignettes used to do this are undeniably effective. There are regular action scenes, you grow to like the characters as you learn more about them and the story comes to a satisfying climax. There is the odd dodgy bit of plotting (Frey has to be unusually stupid not to anticipate certain events) but all in all, very little to complain about.
Well, there is one thing, which is that it’s not very good SF. The whole point of setting a story in a fantastical world is that you can use and hence explore the non-real world elements in the plot, and this one doesn’t do so. The story could have been a pirate yarn set in a historical or fantasy Caribbean and it would have worked just as well - the aerium and demonology are just colouring. But it is a good story well told, and when all is said and done, that’s all that really counts.
Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding - Gollancz, 2010
* * * *
I have read one other Chris Wooding many years ago, which I thought was an interesting new presentation of some standard fantasy tropes. This one does the same for steampunk SF, but rather more successfully. The characters are engaging, the world is interesting and the plot is (mostly) coherent and enjoyable. My main real criticism is that there is nothing in the plot that requires it to be SF.
The set-up is essentially identical to that of Joss Whedon’s splendid but ill-fated TV series Firefly, which was clearly an inspiration. The Ketty Jay is a small-time airship captained by Darian Frey, a man with an extremely dodgy romantic past who employs a crew of social misfits including a demonologist, a young female navigator who really doesn’t want her background to become known, a classically laconic engineer, a doctor with a drink problem and two fighter pilots, one stupidly gung-ho and the other a nervous wreck whose only interest in life is his plane. Frey is offered a job which will make his fortune, and despite some obvious misgivings, he agrees. Hey, guess what? Things don’t go according to plan and Frey finds himself on the run with the forces of the empire and a pirate mercenary on his tail.
The above shows Wooding’s irritating tendency to build his characters on well-worn stereotypes and his plots on less-than-original precepts, but as with The Weavers of Saramyr there are some interesting new ideas. Airship technology is based on aerium, a lighter-than-air gas produced by crushing ore with electromagnets. I also liked the idea of trapping demons by using resonant harmonics. The crew all have Dark Secrets which predictably come out in the course of the story, but the flashback vignettes used to do this are undeniably effective. There are regular action scenes, you grow to like the characters as you learn more about them and the story comes to a satisfying climax. There is the odd dodgy bit of plotting (Frey has to be unusually stupid not to anticipate certain events) but all in all, very little to complain about.
Well, there is one thing, which is that it’s not very good SF. The whole point of setting a story in a fantastical world is that you can use and hence explore the non-real world elements in the plot, and this one doesn’t do so. The story could have been a pirate yarn set in a historical or fantasy Caribbean and it would have worked just as well - the aerium and demonology are just colouring. But it is a good story well told, and when all is said and done, that’s all that really counts.