Teaser

The Americans and the Romans ought to be at war, but an alien menace has forced them into an uneasy alliance. The USS Merrimack is on the frontline of this terrible new war, where everything could change in the blink of an eye . . .

Review

Space Romans! The idea crops up everywhere from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation to Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater. It’s one of those ever-appealing visuals that will likely be with us for some time to come. Yet I don’t think any will do it the way Meluch does. Because The Myriad contains what has to be the absolute maddest justification for a Roman Empire in space that I have ever come across. What if, we are told, that the Roman Empire had never really died? What if everyone who learns Latin is secretly part of a contingency plan? What if all these Latin-speakers emigrated en-masse to a new colony and declared not only their independence, but also war on America? As premises go, this one is absolutely insane, and the book continues to go weird places from there on out.

In a nutshell, that’s both the appeal of the novel, and it’s biggest failing. I love it when an author doesn’t restrain themselves to just one big idea per novel. At least in principle. In practice, they idea falls short of the mark just as often as it excels, and The Myriad is definitely one of those cases where too much has been attempted in too short a span of story. It doesn’t help that the ideas are uniformly crazy. As well as the ancient Roman conspiracy angle, we’ve got an almost Star Trek styled first contact with an alien species that almost immediately leads to the captain sending one of his officers to have sex with an alien present. It’s to gain information, of course, but the officer in question is selected, quite literally because ‘she’s easy, she’ll like it. Excuse me while my brain implodes after reading that. And to top it all off, as well as the Romans/Americans/aliens drama, Meluch throws in time travel and all the paradoxical thinking that ensues. As I say, there’s simply too much going on.

Oh yes, and there’s a massive twist two thirds of the way in. I can’t even begin to describe it without giving the game away. I will say that it would have been the perfect ending to a shorter piece of fiction, or the cliff-hanger of a TV show. Coming in where it does, in the first book in a long series, it leaves me wondering what the point of me reading the first two thirds of the book was. Still, I have to applaud Meluch’s audacity if nothing else.

When we’re not losing our heads over insane plot choices, the actual writing is strong. The characters are as lively as any Trek crew, and an impressive number of them are fleshed out. There is a very American gung-ho nature to a lot of them, but it makes sense in the warped context of the novel. We only get one Roman character, and naturally he’s a superman, but at least his interactions with the crew are interesting. And while we don’t get to see a whole lot of the alien Hive, I like what we do see of them. Within the confines of the Merrimack, everything makes sense, leaving it a lovely island of calm amid a stormy and mindboggling sea of ideas.

I’m still struggling to wrap my head around a lot of the choices made in this novel, but I can’t deny being compelled to keep reading. That’s not to say I fully recommend this book, but some things have to be seen to be believed, and this is one book you’ll want to read for yourselves if you want any hope of understanding R. M. Meluch’s world.

Book Stats

• Tour of the Merrimack (#1)
• First Published in 2006
• Published by DAW
• 375 Pages