“Here we go again,” —C-3PO, Return of the Jedi.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you plow through three mediocre books in thrall to the sunk cost fallacy.
Queen is the third and final novel in the Chronicle of the Sibyl’s War trilogy. I have reviewed both of the previous novels, but here is a quick recap:
Nicole Hammond is fighting for control of the starship Fyrantha. The Shipmasters abduct humans to repair the vessel because some humans, like Nicole, can speak to the ship telepathically to find out what needs fixing. The captured humans have accepted this for decades because the Shipmasters have a side gig selling enslaved aliens to serve as conscripted soldiers. Then Nicole came along and blew the lid off things.
With an uprising looming, the Shipmasters bring in some of their customers to help. The Koffren, big dumb lugs who wear metal masks and carry guns loaded with spider-goo, see an opportunity to take control of the ship for themselves. Meanwhile, Nicole rallies the other slaves together to fight back. But doubt has crept in since Nicole’s plans left a character dead in the last book. I won’t spoil who, because the character was so minor that I forgot his name.
Author Timothy Zahn has set the stage for this conflict across two books. So how does it play out? Mostly the characters just talk and talk and talk.
At one point, I almost threw my Kindle across the room. Nicole enters a room and encounters two aliens who want the drone in her possession. The Shipmasters only feed these aliens when they capture a drone for themselves. What follows is about five pages of negotiation. Nicole will not hand over the drone, but her friends will train the aliens how to hunt for one. They explain how to take advantage of the grass and bushes. The aliens can’t follow these instructions. Nicole offers to have her friends capture another drone for them. But the aliens ask what happens if her friends are defeated in combat? Nicole’s friends say they will split up. But what of the water that bisects the room? The aliens can wait on the other side and the friends will throw it across.
On and on it goes, until the aliens finally just lunge for the drone and the story moves on.
There are entire conversations in this book that play out like this:
“I will do the thing.”
“How will you do the thing?”
“I will perform the steps.”
“What steps are those?”
“I have them in a list here.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Not if we do it carefully.”
“How will you be careful?”
I could excuse some leaden dialog if the characters were interesting. Sadly, everyone is straight out of central casting. There’s the angry guy, there’s the sullen gal, there’s the schemer. Half of Nicole’s allies are tough, noble warriors ready to lay down their life for the cause.
Nicole is supposed to be wise from her time on the streets, but Zahn refuses to give us any insight into what she has seen or done or how that informs her character. Instead, he plays coy with lines like “Not because she was squeamish about watching someone cut off someone else’s head. She’d seen far worse during her time with Trake’s gang.”
Damn, that implies that Nicole has seen some shit. But she’s so softhearted that Zahn feels the need to remind you, again and again, that Nicole used to be in a gang. Then we we get Philadelphia gang bangers saying things like “crapadoodle” and “freaking butt wipe” and the whole flimsy construction begins to fall apart.
I normally stay away from online theorizing, but I’ve read some suggestions that this series was a casualty of a tight deadline and publisher meddling. The rumor goes that Macmillan—which only published YA fiction from Zahn in the past—decided to market this to adults and roll the dice. I have no idea if this is true. I mean, I’m just some dweeb on the Internet. But it would explain why the story feels so toothless.
It’s not a great excuse, though. There are ways to write young adult fiction without pulling your punches. Just look at Joe Abercrombie’s Shattered Sea series.
Timothy Zahn is a writer of considerable talent and skill, but this time he took the night off.
There are two back-to-back situations where the heroine seemingly walks into a trap, all is lost, and then — surprise! It was part of her plan all along. Sorry, we just left those details out to drum up some suspense. This kind of narrative trickery works great in a movie like “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Fight Club” where the rug-pull recontextualizes all the scenes that came before it. Here it just smacks of manufactured drama.
There are even little inconsistencies, like when Nicole says there are still 12 shields that need to be fixed, and a page later, there are still “thirteen gaping holes” in their defenses. Did anybody edit this?
Never mind.
Overall, I found all three books underwhelming. I think there is a halfway-decent story here if an editor had condensed them into a single book. I’m left wondering why this had to be a trilogy. Did Zahn sign a contract for three books? Did he stretch his idea to fit? It reads like a draft zero, the early version of a story where an author is still figuring out the characters and plot before tightening it up.
I’m glad this isn’t my first experience with the author. I know he can do better.
Crapadoodle indeed.
Joe Johnson Writer 