My rating:
4 out of 5
Over a millennium in the past, humans fleeing Earth in slower-than-light vessels discovered the Waywork, an abandoned alien superhighway system that allows instantaneous travel from star to star. The problem: there are a finite number of Waypoint nodes—and the burgeoning population of humans is hemmed in as a result. Furthermore, humanity is divided into contending Starstates. One of the strongest is based on an oligarchy ruling families, but still mostly democratic. The other is a totalitarian nightmare. War seems inevitable.
Now a new Waypoint appears. Might it lead to the long-lost creators of the Waywork? If so, there may be knowledge and technology that will tip the balance in the coming war.
Three people race to make it to the new Waypoint—and beyond. These include Wyodreth Antagean, the reluctant son of an interstellar shipping magnate, Lady Garsina Oswight, the daring daughter of a royal family, and Zuri Mikton, a disgraced flag officer seeking redemption. They are facing an implacable foe in Golsubril Vex, a merciless, but highly effective, autocrat from the Waywork’s most brutal regime. Vex is determined to control the new Waypoint and whatever revelation or power lies on the other side.
Now humanity’s fate—to live in freedom or endless dictatorship—depends on just what that revelation might be. And who gets there first.
***** *** *******
After having read and enjoyed some of Torgersen's previous work (the Chaplains War novel and a number of his shorter stories) I immediately elevated this book to the top of my to-read list when I saw its release. I really like his writing style, which possibly has something to do with the fact (which I only found out recently) that one of his key mentors is Mike Resnick who happens to be one of my favourite authors across all genres. Torgersen delivers to us a good story with good characters and an interesting plot, and the world-building is very good. These facets add up to a pretty good novel that is clearly just the beginning of a larger series of books and/or stories. In his Acknowledgements, Torgersen admits that "retooling for long form has been—and continues to be—a process" after a number of successful shorter works (not least his great success in the Analog magazine Reader's Poll), and I feel that maybe I can sense this a little while reading this. While the story ideas contained in it are excellent and the execution is just fine, there did seem to be a slight lull in the middle, just enough to cause my attention to wander a little. But the last quarter really picks up again and finishes the book off nicely, albeit rather abruptly.
Set in the distant future when Earth is but a distant memory and the topic of legend, the story starts when a new Waypoint in an interconnecting interstellar network called the Waywork suddenly appears. A frantic race begins by rival groups to reach this new portal, find out where it leads to and to then exploit any potential resources it might contain. You see, after the discovery of the Waywork (which was created by an unknown and enigmatic ancient civilization referred to simply as the Waymakers) human space was further broken up into a number "Starstates" which are separated geographically, politically and ideologically. Some of these are in a constant state of tension and territorial dispute and the protagonists in this story are the rival Starstates Constellar and Nautillan. Each one desires the new territory for it's strategic value and whatever the new space might contain, habitable planets being in short supply and a new place for people to settle is quite a prize indeed, one worth going to war over. The ideologies of these two states are quite far removed from one another, the militaristic Nautillan desires to subjugate the other Starstates and to bring them under their own one rule, whereas Constellar (ruled by royal First Families) are generally content to coexist peacefully with other states and to respect each other's ideological differences. What ensues is a tense territorial tussle over the new space, and the new things that are encountered along the way. Straight away it is noted that things are a little bit off, a tad unusual and they realize that there may be new forces or factors at work.
As the story progresses, the characters are built nicely and by the end of the book we have gotten to know a few of them quite well. The characters' depth is fine for this story, but there are one or two personalities that I would have liked to learn more about, but I'm not disappointed enough for it to have depreciated the story at all. Like I said, this is clearly the beginning of a larger story arc, so the characters will obviously grow along with it. Good, because they're a good bunch of players which suit the story well. Again (as is typical for me), my favorite character was one of the less-than-lovely players in Golsubril Vex, an aggressive commander from Nautilan, a single-minded woman who has conquest on behalf of her home Starstate as the prime (i.e. only) objective, no compromises. Her counterpart on the Constellar side is also a woman, Admiral Zuri Mikton and she is almost as fierce, yet she lacks the cruel streak of Vex. Another key character, and also a woman, is the very intelligent yet rather petulant Constellar First Family daughter Lady Garsina Oswight, who is brought along on the expedition officially for her expertise in the study of the Waymakers, but she does kind of manipulate her doting Daddy a wee bit to get on the team. The only other top-level character in here that isn't a woman is Wyodreth Antagean, the rich son of a Constellar shipping magnate who is also an officer in the reserve navy. This chap comes along in both a military capacity and also as the owner of a number of vessels commandeered by the Constellar navy. Maybe Torgersen is trying to make a statement in placing women into most of these powerful positions, a tip of the hat to modern political correctness? He's a reserve military man himself, so maybe he's giving a salute to strong women that he has seen in charge of various things in his own world? Honestly, I don't care at all because I've always enjoyed strong female characters in the stories. However, it is a very noticeable inclusion in this book.
The action scenes are good, really good, and there is no shortage of combat action, both in the vacuum of space and on a planetary surface. They're not usually my sort of thing, but the space battles are quite a lot of fun to read and they keep the pace up in the story. In a nutshell, the combination of action, dialogue and plot is very good, and I'm not quite sure what caused that lull in my interest during the middle section. The ending comes up quite quickly indeed, but we do learn quite a bit of the background story about the earlier days of humanity and how they came to populate the Waywork. However, the nature of the enigmatic Waymakers remains largely unrevealed, waiting for the next book to continue building the picture.
The writing style is excellent, in my opinion, and Torgersen (again) demonstrates his talents with words. For a chap who is not yet a professional author, his storytelling abilities are far in excess of many pro writers that I could name. This guy is one to really watch for the future, and I reckon we'll be seeing some huge best-sellers from him in the years to come. The only thing that seems to lack in the delivery of this book is the element of humour, a dose of light-heartedness or even some cutting sarcasm to break up the tension of the main plot. That would really elevate it for me and probably prompt me to award at least another half a star to the rating score. It's highly enjoyable at any rate, so that's really just nit-picking by me.
I assume that Torgersen is a man of faith, because the concept of belief in something bigger than ourselves, faith in things unseen in another realm of existence, is a recurring theme right through the book. One of the second-tier characters is a chaplain and there is a body of scripture that is often referred to in the story, and the appearance of the new Waypoint seems to fulfill prophecies contained within this. The existence of God is suggested many times and references are made to the scriptures throughout the book. These things (as well as in Chaplains War) certainly point to him being a God-fearing person who ponders the question of our existence not being afraid to consider a higher power. This is a welcome thing as far as I'm concerned, because I do occasionally get ticked off by arrogant atheism (if there is even such a thing) and the anti-faith sentiment that often comes across in a lot of science fiction writing. Why should the idea of an omnipotent something or someone outside of our understanding be so tough to handle? It is a speculative fiction genre after all, supposedly populated by readers and writers with broad minds.
Anyway, to round things off, this book is a fine read and a nice blend of military sci-fi and space opera that is worth picking up if you feel like some relaxing entertainment from one of the more prominent new sci-fi writers to come along in recent years. I'll certainly be keeping my eyes peeled for the inevitable sequel or sequels.
4/5 for concept
4/5 for delivery
4/5 for entertainment
= 4 out of 5
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