In March, I reviewed Through Struggle, The Stars by John J Lumpkin. The original book is set in the post American world where China and Japan are the two top powers and Europe and America are the third tier. Just as important to the idea that this is a post American world is humanity has reached out into the stars and colonized multiple worlds and a major war is sparked over the expansion into interstellar space. Here I am reviewing the second book, The Desert of the Stars. This is the sequel to Through Struggle, The Stars.
The first book saw the outbreak of the war and the intrigue that pulls the United States into the war on Japan's side. The second book continues and focuses on two characters in particular: Neil Mercer and Rand Castillo, both major characters from the first book, while there are several other characters, those two are the focus of the book.
In general, I liked the book. I did not like it as much as I did the first of the series. There are a few reasons for this. For one, the book is significantly smaller than the first, coming in at 350 pages rather than 500+. The story felt more focused, to be sure, but it lost some of the larger sweep. The emphasis on the two characters also helped do this. Likewise, the fog of war has most definitely settled in after the Battle of Kennedy Station. The emphasis was shifted some from the space battles to the politics and spycraft. The world building dropped away some. While Entente was covered more in depth, the rest of the Human Reach universe, with two exceptions, was ignored. I could have handled the extra length to see more of the universe. Likewise, it would have been good to have more from the POV of the Chinese; what was present was far more positive than the original book Chinese POV character though (who I found a bit implausible the first time and was corrected by those who are either Chinese or married to Chinese as he is in fact plausible, if not likeable).
The one technical net negative that I have is in the cyber security/cyberwarfare aspect. There is one event in the book where it becomes important. Let's just say I didn't, couldn't buy it. It happens to be another area that I deal with, although as a sysadmin of big iron rather than a cracker/hacker of any sort. After what has to have been nearly a century and a half of offensive warfare in the digital domain, things like that are...implausible and broke my suspension of disbelief.
There are a lot of big politics, geopolitics or whatever the proper interstellar adjective would be! The Europeans, Russians and Indians make appearances of differing lengths. I was rather surprised at the level of absolutely byzantine Machiavellian international politics that take place. It was almost jaw droppingly surprising. This one is an antineutral development, you might say. The reactions I have to it are strong and both good and bad. It will take a few more reads before I can decide if I like it or not.
On the plus side, Lumpkin does provide information as to why various nations did not grace the first book. He also hints a lot more. I found his touching on Mars to be intriguing, in a Bigelow-Vegas run sort of way (some of you will know what that means). There was a fair amount of foreshadowing in the first book, nothing blatant a la Robert Jordan, but present and picked up on that came to fruition in this book. The prose also remained good. I was not bored with the book, though I did not find it as enjoyable as the first. I hope Passage of the Stars, the next book in the series, is an improvement on this one though. Oh and bring back the Bayandor.
I do recommend buying Desert of the Stars. I'm curious as to the reactions of others, so please post your own reviews and post some comments here.
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