Crystal Rain

I didn't only buy Tobias S. Buckell's debut novel, Crystal Rain (2006) at Balticon because it had a gorgeous finned airship on the cover, but I admit, Todd Lockwood's art was part of the attraction.  The book mostly lived up to it.

Is there such a genre as Caribbean-inflected Steampunk?  If so, this book would be representative of it.  We're in a low-tech human colony on an alien planet, Nanagada, in an area settled primarily by groups from the Caribbean, which gives us interesting dialect and lead characters (and villains) of color.  The villains are bloodthirsty Aztec-ish warriors intent on conquering the peaceful inhabitants and using them as either slaves or blood sacrifices.  Or both, sequentially.  Our hero is one John deBrun, who suffers from amnesia and does not seem to age, but has settled down and built a new life for himself with a wife and preteen son.  When the Azteca invade, the family is scattered and deBrun finds himself (via airship and railroad) in the Capitol City, where he is tempted/coerced into setting out on a mission to recover the mysterious Ma Wi Jung, a legendary weapon which may help turn the tide of the war.

Crystal rain, by the way, refers to snow.  This is not particularly relevant to the story, which is more science-fictional than the above synopsis makes it sound.  The Azteca are being manipulated by aliens.  Capitol City has also got some aliens, rivals of the others, who act as incarnate vodoun (voodoo) deities.  The aliens are in a spat.  Humans are caught in the middle.  John deBrun is more than he appears.  So are other people, especially the mysterious, lethal Pepper.  The whole stranded-and-can't-go-home aspect of the colony is not quite as hopeless as it appears.  And none of this will matter if the Azteca manage to destroy Capitol City, which they're well on their way to doing.  The creeping sense of danger and increasingly hopeless position of the City-dwellers are nicely portrayed.  I was rather reminded of the siege of Porifors in Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls.  The Azteca motivation is a bit of a mystery, however; it seems they are doing this because they are evil, because their resident aliens are evil, because EVIL ALIENS ARE EVIL.  It all seems a rather baroque and indirect way for aliens to carry out a feud.

Some things work very well, though.  The culture of Nanagada is colorful and interesting.  I especially liked the brief bit of Carnival we got before all hell broke loose.  I was also very fond of the scudder-fish, eel-like creatures that one group of islanders uses as individual water-transport.  But I was completely unclear from start to finish as to why the forest-ranger troops were called "mongoose men" and the city police "ragamuffins".  Some sort of Caribbean slang?  Whoosh: over my head it goes!

The biggest issue for me was the female characters, of whom only three are really significant: John deBrun's wife Shanta; Dihana, mayor of Capitol City; and the "Frenchi" girl Sandy, who befriends deBrun's son Jerome.  Shanta disappears early and serves thereafter as a motivational device.  Sandy serves as a mild sort of juvenile love interest.  And Dihana is besieged, uncertain, emotional, and in constant need of male support and protection.  A vodoun priestess makes a few cameos, but is basically a bit of popup cardboard.  Do we have some kind of problem with writing women, Mr. Buckell?  I think we do.  And it was a real irritation while reading.

Some loose ends were left dangling noticeably.  One feels at the end that this might be the start of a series, and indeed, there are two succeeding books.

Overall: refreshingly unusual setting, but evil-for-the-sake-of-evil villains.  Characters of color, but an inability to write interesting women.  Airships and scudder-fish, hurrah.  Dangling plot threads, not so much.  I would tag this as a pretty good read, though not great.  It's certainly worth reading for the Caribbean-steampunk aspect.  I'm still deciding whether to go after the rest of the series, though.

Read for yourself: