Teaser

Bengal Station is humanity’s gateway to the stars, where ships come to Earth and leave for other worlds. Like any port, it attracts all sorts, from criminals to the telepaths who investigate them . . .

Review

Necropath is my sixth Eric Brown novel. For those keeping track, I absolutely adored Helix, enjoyed Engineman and Penumbra, but was thoroughly underwhelmed by New York Nights and New York Blues. Since Necropath is the start of a trilogy (all with fantastic Jon Sullivan covers), I was hoping for something good. Honestly, I’m still not sure what I got. This book falls firmly in the middle of the road for me.

‘Telepathic cops’ is a premise that’s hard for me to turn down. It’s not exactly a new concept (the name Alfred Bester springs to mind), but I have almost endless patience for police procedurals with an SF twist. Indeed, I think that would make for some great TV, since procedurals are all over screens anyway. I digress, but the point is that I was primed to enjoy this book.

Unfortunately, the crime element was thoroughly underwhelming. Investigating an alien cult should have been tense and thrilling, but instead the story meandered all over the place. At one point, our intrepid investigator goes off to another planet for a chapter or two, but it never feels like a grand expedition. More like popping down to the shops.

There are also two of my pet peeves to be found in Necropath. Both of which occur in the secondary plot, which follows the misadventures of a young prostitute. The first pet peeve is alien sex. I honestly could not care less which orifices tentacles are going in and out of, or how pleasurable it is to share the experience telepathically. I get that it’s a plot point, but it didn’t need to be one. The other pet peeve is broken English. there are situations in which it works. Conversations between characters who don’t need to be speaking English is not one of them. It borders on the offensive, and is plain irritating to read.

Thankfully, the book is saved by one thing that Brown does incredibly well. Bengal Station feels like a real, lived in place. There’s a brilliant fusion of cultures at work here, all stemming from a cultural melting point in the South-East Asian region. This is a port that has spaceships going through it on a regular basis, but also has people loading cows onto those ships, an underclass of beggar children slowly getting hooked on drugs, and monasteries where monks contemplate mortality. This is a station that feels overpopulated, but also teeming with a rich and vibrant culture. I don’t know if Eric Brown spent time in Asia, but I do know that, while some stereotypes do feature in this book, he has a knack for capturing a society very different from a lot of of Anglophone science fiction tends to present.

Overall, Necropath didn’t live up to my expectations, but it’s still far from being a bad book. I plan to read the rest of the trilogy when I get the chance, and my hope is that with the groundwork laid so firmly in book one, the other two will be able to focus more on the narrative aspects.

Book Stats

• Bengal Station #1
• First Published in 2008
• 414 Pages