NETHEREAL, by Brian Niemeier
Mr. Niemeier was kind enough to give some of my book announcements a retweet, so I checked out his first book, NETHEREAL. I bought it in February and just finished it, which is a regrettable demonstration of my reading speed these days. Fortunately, the book was worth the wait.
Basically: Pirates Of The Caribbean meets Firefly meets Event Horizon. Also, Space Elves.
The plot revolves around Jaren Peregrine, an unscrupulous pirate captain. Jaren is half-Gen (think Space Elves), and the Gen were exterminated by the Guild, the ruthless brotherhood that maintains and violently enforces a monopoly on all interstellar travel. Jaren keeps trying to rouse a resistance against the Guild, but it never goes well.
Then, one day, Jaren and his crew receive an intriguing offer – a secret organization opposed to the Guild has constructed an experimental vessel that will provide passage to a new universe, one free of the Guild’s influence.
Unfortunately, the new universe turns out to be Hell.
Like, the actual place, Nine Circles and all. Fortunately, Hell is organized a bit like late Carolingian France, with various warlords waging endless battles against each other. If Jaren and crew want to get home, they need to play those warlords against each other…but increasingly they find themselves sucked into a plot to raise new gods to replace the old ones.
It’s a really imaginative book. It’s extremely hard to explain a constructed universe to the reader, but NETHEREAL pulls it off (it helps that there is a glossary of terms at the end of the book for quick reference). At times, I would almost say it’s too imaginative – it’s got FTL starships and lasers and swords and demons and necromancers and liches (Space Liches!) and gods and elves and starfighters and zombies (Space Zombies!) and a bunch of other things all within a 590 page book. Anyone not already familiar with SF/F tropes will have a hard time following the book, but they’re probably not the target audience anyway.
I definitely enjoyed it, and will be checking out the sequel SOULDANCER before 2016 is over.
And that scene with the walrus! You’ll know it when you get to it.
-JM