Reading and Writing

[mtvessel]

Feb 2023
Ocean's Echo – Everina Maxwell – Orbit, 2022
* * * *
This novel is set in the same universe as Maxwell's previous book Winter's Orbit, though apart from the cultural convention of gender identification (wood for male, flint for female) and the presence of the space-lane-controlling Resolution, there is very little connection. Well, other than the two main characters, who personality-wise are cookie-cutter copies of the protagonists of the earlier novel. Fortunately, the new situation that Maxwell puts them in is interesting and well worked out, and the story is pleasingly unexpected.

The SF theme here is psi powers, which are similar to those in Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man. A small group of people – the offspring of a now defunct military project – are Readers, able to understand the surface thoughts of someone they concentrate on, or Architects, who can "write" (issue commands to) other people which they are forced to obey. Tennal Halkana is an example of the former – we first encounter him trying to blag his way into a swanky hotel – but he is also the nephew of the Legislator, the president of the world government, and he has been abusing his powers in a way that could embarrass her politically. So she arranges for him to be conscripted into the army (readers make good pilots, being able to navigate the twists and turns of disturbed space) and to be synced to an Architect, making him forever susceptible to the latter's commands and hence compliant. However, the army has reckoned without the unyielding sense of justice of the Architect concerned; Surit Yeni, the son of a disgraced military officer who died during an attempted rebellion.

Once again the story is told from both Tennal's and Surit's points of view so their thoughts and actions make perfect sense to the reader. Compared to Winter's Orbit, there is less romance (just as well, as the trope of two people forced into cohabiting is somewhat rehashed) and more plot, which competently encompasses political and military corruption and does interesting things with the origins of the Reader/Architect powers. The themes of consent and free will are deftly negotiated and there is a dramatically satisfying climax in which you are fully invested. With this book, Maxwell has shown that she can write good SF as well as romance, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.