Knight: A Chronicle of the Sibyl’s War

When we last left Nicole Hammond, the former gang member-turned-galactic maintenance worker had just been named the protector of the starship Fyrantha. But now she has a problem. The aptly named Shipmasters suspect that their human slaves may be capable of violence.

For decades, the captive humans kept a lid on things by pretending to only fight with their words or pool noodles or something. That’s because the Shipmasters, we discover, search the galaxy looking for new species to fight in their arenas. When a species turns out to be particularly adept at war, the Shipmasters enslave their home world and send the hapless creatures out to fight on the frontlines.

Sadly, no one told Nicole this for plot reasons. Now the cat is out of the bag. The Shipmasters toss the humans into the arena and set them to battle amongst themselves. Their only hope is that Nicole will come up with a convoluted plan to bamboozle their overlords into thinking they made a mistake.

Nicole heads into the arena to speak to the heads of the human factions. One group is willing to throw the fight, but the other is headed by Nicole’s maybe-ex-boyfriend Bungie, a cheap thug with poor impulse control. He’s convinced that winning the battle will grant him a one-way ticket home. Thinking was never his strong suit. Nicole then learns that there is a drug on board that could render Team Bungie unable to fight. She sets off to find it, with the Shipmasters hot on her heels.

It begs the question: If the Shipmasters know what Nicole is up to, why even stage this conflict to begin with?

The answer: Because without it there would be no plot.

Here we are in book two of what is described as “A Chronicle of the Sibyl’s War.” I find the use of the word “War” to be very generous. With the first book, it felt like the entire novel was setting the table for the conflict to follow. This time, it feels like busywork to delay the inevitable. Maybe I’m just too genre savvy for my own good. It’s hard not to see where the breadcrumb trail is headed. Eventually, this story is going to blossom into a battle for control of the Fyrantha. Timothy Zahn spends much of the book laying the groundwork. There’s nothing wrong with a slow build up to a climactic showdown. But there needs to something to fill the slow march to our conclusion.

I’d settle for some decent character development. In the 30 minutes since the first novel ended, Nicole has had a change of heart. Now she’s crabby. She spends most of the book being irritated by everyone, even her closest allies. Being likable isn’t necessary in a protagonist. But Nicole just feels petulant. It’s certainly a shift from her passivity in book one, but it doesn’t feel particularly earned or warranted. The supporting cast serve a plot function and little else.

The biggest missed opportunity—which I touched on in my review of the first book—is that Nicole’s criminal background never feels anything more than superficial. A streetwise gang banger in a space opera is literally the promise that got me to read the first novel. But two books in, and I never really buy her as a street punk. It’s not for a lack of trying. Zahn name drops Nicole’s time in Philly or Trake’s crew about once per page. It just never amounts to much. I guess she learned how to “deal with people.” She could’ve got that as a waitress, or navigating personalities at the rotary club.

Why did she join a gang? Did she have a choice? How does she feel about that? What did she do in the gang? Did she commit any crimes? Does she feel remorse? There’s a lot of fertile soil here that goes unused. I mean, I don’t expect HBO’s The Wire level of verisimilitude here. Not in a story with space centaurs. But getting a sense of where she came from helps contextualize where she ends up. If Zahn wants us to believe that Nicole’s time navigating gang life has prepared her for dealing with the different factions of the Fyrantha, then we need to see that arc and how it develops. Maybe it is being saved for the conclusion.

I think sheer inertia will carry me through the final book here. I might as well see the trilogy through. But I’m glad this isn’t my first brush with Timothy Zahn. There isn’t much here that speaks to the mastery he brought to books like Icarus Hunt, Night Train to Rigel, or his Star Wars tie-ins.

Knight and Pawn exist in that terrible middle ground of benign adequacy. There isn’t enough here to love or hate. It’s just middling. The worst criticism I can make is that days after finishing the book, I struggle to even remember it.

Let’s hope the third time’s a charm.