Teaser

Though the benevolence of the alien Shoal, humanity has reached the stars. Yet the Shoal maintain their monopoly over faster-than-light travel. Can humanity ever be truly free when this gift can be taken away at any time . . .

Review

Back in the early days of science fiction, a single idea was enough for a story. Almost a century later, and many of those ideas have been used so frequently that we no longer stop and question them. Take faster-than-light travel. When E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith wrote The Skylark of Space in 1928, he pioneered the idea of a spaceship travelling between solar systems, the very notion that we could travel faster than the speed of light was enough to make it a noteworthy story. what a novel and fascinating idea! But science fiction has a way of building on itself. Of slowly devouring its own ideas until the wondrous becomes mundane. Now, FTL, lightspeed, warp space, hyperdrives, and a dozen other names are all just part of the background that we expect in science fiction. After all, how are we supposed to enjoy tales of multiple worlds when the journey between those worlds is long enough to kill anyone attempting to make it?

What makes Gary Gibson’s Stealing Light interesting is that it does something different with FTL. Yes, the technology is well-known. Yes, it’s used in daily life by millions of people. But it is controlled by a select few. Not in a Dune way, with inhuman navigators. Nor in a dystopian manner with corporate monopolies. Instead, it is offered to all by a group of benevolent yet mercantile aliens. The catch is that they have offered the same to other species, and have offered them all the same deal. The Shoal will let us use their FTL drives, but if we ever try and develop our own, or reverse-engineer the technology, there will be terrible consequences.

Gibson’s work comes from the same brand of British Space Opera that gave us Iain M. Banks, and you can see a little of Banks’ legacy in the humour. Luckily, Gibson is a better plotter than Banks, and less prone to going off on tangents. The only real fault I have with the start of this series is the pacing, which is heavy on flashbacks, and constantly jumps between characters. It’s great once it gets going, but it is a little tricky to get into. This could very well be a me problem, however, as I have another space opera review in the works in which I will make a very similar complaint.

The good news is that Stealing Light kicks off a completed series of space operas that I now have rather high hopes for. This book is over six hundred pages long, but it feels a lot shorter. It’s a fast-paced and action-packed book that overcomes its flaws as it progresses. Even better, there are some nice juicy ideas floating just under the surface that I’m sure will be explored in more detail as the series goes on. If nothing else, the Cthulhu-esque aliens are worth picking up a copy for all by themselves.

Gibson might not be one of the big names in British SF, but judging by this book, he’s more than capable of holding his own alongside Reynolds, Banks, and Tchaikovsky. I look forward to reading the rest of the series when I can find a copy of Nova War.

Book Stats

• The Shoal Sequence #1
• First Published 2007
• 603 Pages