The Dragon's Nine Sons [Paperback]

I love alternate history.

One of my favorite sub-genres within the lands of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I've alternate history from Lest Darkness Fall and Guns of the South, and through newer authors like Charles Stross, Naomi Novik and S.M. Stirling.

Another favored sub-genre of mine is space opera and adventure. From Planet of Adventure and Vance's novels in the Gaean Reach, through Vorkosigan's adventures, Alistair Reynolds, and others.

Chris Roberson (whose Paragaea was one of my favorite reads last year) has married these two genres in a novel set in his Celestial Empire alternate history, The Dragons Nine Sons. (TDNS). I also, thanks to his kind graces, had an opportunity to first read a prequel story, "The Line of Dichotomy"

It's the dirty dozen in space...in an alternate history space war between the Chinese and the Aztecs.

That's the flippant way to describe the novel.

Set in an Alternate History where the 21st century is a conflict between a world-spanning Chinese Empire and their only significant rival, the Mexica (Aztecs), TDNS is a story of several disgraced Chinese soldiers and officers, brought together for a one-way suicide mission on a stolen Mexica ship. The conflict between these two powers has heated up around Mars, and the Chinese have discovered that the Mexica have a secret asteroid base. Take out that base, and the Mexica's space efforts would be severely crippled. However, such a mission is not likely to result in any survivors.

Thus, we meet Captain Zhuan Jie and Bannerman Yao, the two disgraced head officers picked for the mission. While the former's reason for being included is made clearly early, we only later learn the full depth of Yao's story (and this is gone in more detail in the story I read along with it). We also meet the rest of the crew, and at various points during the trip, get the classic device of them telling their tale of how they came to be on the mission.

After training and preparation and the long trip to the asteroid, the real mission begins. A twist, shamefully spoiled on the back blurb, changes the mission parameters dramatically, and the crew has an additional objective to simply destroying the asteroid base...

The weakest part of the novel, in my opinion, is the execution of the mission itself. I felt that the Mexica were a bit too faceless, as personalities and antagonists. Oh, we get very lovely detail on the surface about their strange technology and culture and how it compares to the Chinese. Particularly gruesome was the use of blood sacrifice as a sensor to activating controls on the ship (and presumably elsewhere). And the city within the asteroid base is well detailed.

However, the Mexica don't work as individual opponents. While the Line of Dichotomy does portray one of the Jaguar knights as an individual, in TDNS, they are relatively faceless enemies, adversaries to be killed and nothing more. I was a bit disappointed in this. My favorite WWII action movie, <strong>Where Eagles Dare</strong>, takes great pains to make the Nazis in the Castle individuals as well as adversaries. I didn't get that same sense in this book, and I think it could have made the latter portion of book as strong as the first parts.

I also got the feeling that the mission as described was too much for the Dragon's Nine Sons, especially given the secondary mission that the crew undertakes and just how fraught with peril the asteroid is. Roberson pulls his punches a little, I think, in making an impossible mission within the realm of possibility.

The stronger, earlier portions of the novel give us a sense of the strange alternate nature of this world. I ate up the rich details of life in a Chinese dominated Mars and space navy. Details large and small fill and develop very nicely. And Roberson feels no need to actually discuss the point of divergence, a weakness many novels in the genre have. The world is simply presented as it is for us to enjoy. And I did.

In addition, Roberson does a great job showing the natures of our protagonists, both in their personalities and in their backstories. The gambler/thief, the prankster, the murderers (although we come to understand why they killed), the pacifist...yes, they are clearly archetypes that you have seen before, but they are well drawn, with a good amount of tension between such very different characters. And these character traits pay off throughout the novel. Roberson understands Chekhov's Law very well.

Overall, I am quite happy with the read and enjoyed it. There are a number of other stories set in the Celestial Empire (one or two of which I have read already). Given my taste for Alternate History, I intend to seek the others out and read them, too.

I do challenge Chris, though, to write a story set in this universe strictly from the point of view of the Mexica. Perhaps getting fully in the mind of the sacrifice-loving Mexica will make them rise from the level of mooks to full fledged adversaries worthy of being the antagonists of the mighty Celestial Empire.

If, like me, you like both the sub-genres of Alternate History and Space Opera/Adventure, then The Dragons Nine Sons is most definitely worth sampling.

His knowledge and grasp of Qing dynasty Chinese and Meso-american history is apparent in the way he is able to take known 18th century Chinese and 16th century Aztec/Mayan institutions and attitudes and extend it into the future, something many authors who attempt this usually fail to do convincingly.

He manages to stay away from rehashing stereotypical views of imperial China and therefore manages to do an impressively convincing job of putting together a world where a completely different set of rules, values, institutions and societal norms comes to fore, allowing the reader to envision a completely different historical timeline. This alternate history he opens up shows the reader a world far more diverse and interesting if these other world cultures had not been stymied and been allowed to develop into the modern world.

He takes the reader into the unknown by opening up the reader's mind and not only shows the possibilities of how other traditional civilizations could have progressed and modernized but that it is possible for them to progress and modernize. We will DEFINITELY be watching this author.

Leong Kit Meng
(author of "Chinese Siege Warfare: Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity" ISBN 981-05-5380-3)

I'd like to say for starters that I love an original setting. I read a lot so I get extremely tired of the similar and formulaic worlds and cultures. I was not tired of this setting.

Imperial China never fell and became a world spanning empire. In the year 2052, by the outdated an unused Gregorian calendar, 4952 since the reign of Huang-Di, the Yellow Emperor, It is colonizing the planet Mars, called the Fire Star, using fusion space ships. However, the Aztec Empire of Mexica wants to conquer the planet and gather the live prisoners for their bloody sacrifices.

Nine Imperial Soldiers, all condemned to die for various crimes, have been offered one last chance for a pardon. Use a captured Mexica ship and plant a fusion bomb in the heart of the enemy supply base, in a virtual suicide mission.

It's a fascinating concept and Chris Roberson did his research. Both the Chinese and the Aztec empires have been well researched and are believable. This is also hard scifi with all the technology used being plausible which is a rarity considering that the story is not focused on the technology.

The names could be an issue for some people. There are nine main characters to keep track of and they all have Chinese names. I did appreciate that Chris Roberson kept them relatively short, all of one syllable, and did not bring in family names to confuse the issue.

It has the potential to be a great book but it trips in two places, which brings it down to average.

The first are the characters. They're all two-dimensional. The personalities of this nine-man band are all standard. You have the stoic, the coward, the trickster, the religious, the mentally challenged, the gambler, ect. None of them really break out of their roles, which becomes a major problem in the middle of the book when they're all alone on the cramped ship.

I get the feeling Roberson visualized the middle as a character study. Nine people, all with different personalities, all flawed, all trapped in a to small space on the way to their deaths. The possibilities are endless but he can't make it work, there just isn't enough character there. The personalities clash, they get into a fight, and then at the end one of them will monologue their back-story.

Yes, it all holds together, yes, by the end everything will make sense, no, it is not particularly engaging. There is no character depth or study of human nature, there is no real conflict even, all the intercharacter decisions are relatively straightforward. The back-stories are relatively engaging but without energy or life to them, it becomes a recital of facts and predictable encounters. It never lost my attention but I was never really enthralled.

That took out the entire middle of the book.

Roberson could have bumped the review up to four with a good ending but like the middle it came off as slightly lackluster. Its as if he filled all the dots to get them to the enemy base, but once there Roberson realized he'd set up an impossible challenge for his characters and had no idea how they were going to pull it off. He fills in with lots of setting information on Mexica and Aztec culture so that it begins to feel more like a scholarly essay then a commando raid into a heavily guarded enemy fortress.

For me at least it maintained some interest but pulse pounding excitement it was not.

The "Twist" to the story is the change from suicide to rescue mission. This happens in the last fifty pages and is well set up and foreshadowed throughout the book. Why they spoiled the surprise by pasting it onto the back of the book I have no idea. In the end though the lack of characterization hurts it as well. When the change comes everyone basically shrugs and says ok in about one page, admittedly, they have reason but the one character I'd except to give even a token dilemma and soul searching doesn't.

If there was a sequel (yes, some of them do survive) I'd read it because this setting has so much potential but Roberson is going to need to study Character Drama or military Sci-Fi this fails as both. At the least Roberson is going to need to put a lot more thought onto what his characters are thinking and feeling next time.