Forsaken Skies (Volume 1 of The Silence)
By D. Nolan Clark
Published by Orbit, 2016
Print: $15.99
Ebook: $9.99
In the future (is that a cliched way to start a review?), mankind has been able to explore and colonize the universe using wormholes. Unfortunately the human race is pretty much the same as it is now: greedy, destructive, and shortsighted. The known universe has been broken up into different sectors run by transplanetary commercial monopolies only interested in profit. Essentially they are warlords that are constantly fighting to make the most money and own the most resources. The most powerful military force, the Navy, stands watch over Earth and plays the corporations against each other so that no one of them becomes powerful enough to threaten our home planet.
One of these countless planets, Niraya, owned by a company named Centrocor, has been attacked by an unknown, possibly alien force. This is quite a surprise because in all of their travels through the stars, humans have never encountered aliens. While Centrocor has some mining operations on Niraya, most of the inhabitants of the planet are there because they wanted to practice their various religions in relative peace away from the hustle and bustle of more populated planets. Niraya is for all intents and purposes, defenseless against the large fleet of hostile ships currently headed towards it.
Two emissaries, Elder McRae and Roan, have been sent to find help for their beleaguered world. They cannot get the corporation that runs the planet to send any troops and even the Navy turns down their request. Niraya just isn't worth it. The only person that will step up to help is Alester Lanoe, a 300 year old legendary fighter pilot that has served in and survived countless wars. Unfortunately, he's retired from the military and is only able to muster up a feeble handful of allies to mount a defense for Niraya. There's Valk, a former combat pilot who was so severely burned in a battle that he almost never takes off his spacesuit. Zhang is his second in command. She was Lanoe's former lover, and to complicate matters, she's inhabiting someone else's body. Caroline Ehta is a tough soldier but is so shell shocked she can't fly. Lieutenant Maggs is a Han Solo type who will probably double cross Lanoe the first chance he gets. Lastly, there's Thom, a clone that killed his own father because he was planning to use Thom's body as the new receptacle of his brain. Complicated, huh?
Let's not forget that weird robotic automatons are heading towards Niraya while all the drama of assembling a team is going on.
When I first started reading this book, I thought I was in for a great space opera and was really digging it. The problem started with the aliens or robots or whatever the enemy are. The more we see them in the book, the more boring the menace becomes. To me, the aliens at some point become almost a stand-in for zombies. They don't seem to have a lot of intelligence. They have no regard for the loss of their forces, and they don't speak (a la The Silence). It reminded me of the robots from The Matrix, but these foes lack their intelligence. So that was a point where the novel started to go a little south for me.
It wasn't just the enemy that became a bit boring. The main characters became less interesting as the story progressed as well. It's kinda sad really...it should be the opposite. They just never seemed to evolve except for a few surprises here and there. For the most part they followed a pretty basic story arc.
I enjoyed the Magnificent Seven/ Seven Samurai aspect of the plot but it's been done to death. What makes this book a little different is the low skill level of most of the particpants. I guess I wouldn't call it skill level. I meant more that all of them have major character flaws that keep them from reaching hero status in the eyes of the reader. But Clark never did anything interesting with these interesting characters.
This is the first book of a trilogy with the second book arriving the first part of next year. Even though this novel wasn't great, I will definitely give the second book a shot when it comes out.
My Grade: B
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