Light of Impossible Stars - my review

Light of Impossible Stars by Gareth L. Powell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wow.

After reading Embers of War and Fleet of Knives my one concern wasn't if the third book would be good, but rather how Powell would tie everything up into a satisfying conclusion. I shouldn't have doubted, the climax of the novel is breathtaking in scope and execution.

I'm not going into too many details here, as all the action depends on knowing what happened in the previous books, but things have gone from potentially better to horrifically worse. The fate of civilization rests with the crew of the sentient warship Trouble Dog and a young woman who is the heir to a legacy no one could dream of.

So, it's space opera. Massively over-powered starships, sweeping vistas, big dumb objects, big not-so-dumb objects, space monsters. . . pretty much every trope is nailed. So why is it so much better than others of the same type?

Because it is a book about people. All of whom - sentient starships included - are weary and broken. There isn't a strong jaw or noble gleam of the eye in the bunch. Every single character in the trilogy is running from their pasts. Which makes see them confront the future all the more interesting. They screw up, sometimes in epic fashion. They are angry, hurt, desperate, broken people. And that's why I loved them so much.

There's no grand happy ending, although there is hope for one, and in a final epilogue-like chapter, Trouble Dog speaks a little about what happened after the climax of the book, which does bring things to a nice close.

One last thing, Gareth L. Powell has created my favorite alien species in decades in the Druff. Hexapodal natural engineers that evolved in the World Tree, a world-spanning example of megaflora that the Druff tend in a symbiotic relationship. The chapters written from the point of view of Nod, Trouble Dog's engineer, are brilliant examples of showing an alien mind at work.

A really fantastic end to a wonderful trilogy.



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