I just finished reading Beyond the Empire, by KB Wagers.
Quick synopsis: The Gunrunner Empress and her loyalist forces finally defeat the conspiracy against the throne that they’ve been fighting for the last two books in the series, and finish the struggle against a mysterious enemy who is revealed to have some surprisingly personal motivations.
Reflecting on this series overall, I want to say that it’s been a fun read. It’s not exceptionally clever writing, the sort that you enjoy for the prose itself, but the books as a whole are just crazy enough to be a good time. It’s an incredibly melodramatic soap opera of a story wearing sci-fi and political intrigue trappings, but that’s all right, sometimes you just want to drown yourself in popcorn and enjoy yourself for a bit.
Looking back on it, I think I was too harsh in my criticisms of the first book in the series. All the problems that I mentioned are still there, yes, but how much they actually affect enjoyment of the story is entirely different from how much emphasis I placed on them. I still wish that characters didn’t smile and laugh as a response to every single situation no matter what the actual emotions involved are, and that the author had a better understanding of time, and that certain scenes were given more detail, but you know what? None of that stuff made me stop reading this series. And I’m probably going to read the sequel series as well. Maybe not immediately, because I’ve got a bit of a backlog of other books that I impulse bought on my Kindle, but I’m going to get there. This series was fun.
There were three things that genuinely did detract from the story, though.
First, we have the true identity of the main villain, or rather the protagonist’s apparent inability to deduce it. Spoilers follow for the rest of the paragraph: I thought that the main characters had figured out that particular mystery in a scene at the end of chapter eleven. Looking back at it now I think it was an attempt at foreshadowing that went too far, but in the moment I saw two characters having a conversation that appeared to reach the obvious conclusion as to the villain’s secret identity. Which made me somewhat confused later on when Hail was agonizing over who he could possibly be, until eventually she actually figured it out ten chapters later.
Second, we have the fact that Hail Bristol spends this book picking up bad dictator habits, and the people around her really don’t treat her actions with the severity that they deserve. She develops a fondness for junta-style summary executions, and only a couple of other characters ever call her out on how absolutely awful that is. And then they get shouted down or have their minds changed by Hail nobly insisting that she “had to do it,” or that it was “justice,” which aren’t really satisfactory reasons. This is a series where at this point I’m fine to run things on story logic rather than what’s realistic, but this was so egregious that I felt it needed to be pointed out. Murdering accused traitors without trial in front of their friends and comrades, and making sure that it’s being broadcast live so that everyone from God to their mother can watch as well, is not a good look. Neither is having captured enemies executed without trial, or having them “commit suicide” after you imprison them. If this is how the government of the Empire acts, I can understand why there seem to be so many revolutionaries walking around.
And third, (BIG SPOILERS FOLLOW), we have the fact that the main villain unexpectedly turns into the Riddler for the climax of the book. Which honestly is kind of fun, but I think it was meant to be way more harrowing than I was treating it. I thought it made the climax of the novel feel kind of slapstick, with the main characters following a series of clues that the villain intentionally left for them, like some kind of cliche serial killer from a bad detective novel.
These three things didn’t mean that the main thrust of the book–the counter-attack against the conspirators, the danger at every turn, the intrigue–were lost. They were flies in the ointment, but the core of the novel is still pretty good. It’s pulpy and melodramatic and hilariously over-the-top in a way that I’m not quite sure was intentional, but still fun.
Before I close out the review, I want to take a quick aside to share this absolute gem of a quote that I wrote down when I read it so that I could bring it up later. For context, this is in the middle of an important meeting full of admirals and generals, and the two named characters have been having a conversation with each other that the others in the meeting have been listening to:
“I smiled, a lazy baring of teeth that was good for scaring most people; however, Hao’s expression didn’t change in the slightest and we stared at each other for several minutes before I spoke again.”
If you don’t know why that sentence is weird, I invite you to go stare at something for two minutes to get a feel for how long that actually is. Better yet, do it in the middle of a meeting with a group of important admirals. In the middle of a conversation just stop and stare for two full minutes. A five-second pause in a conversation like this is uncomfortably long, and this goes on for minutes! Things like this in the novel make me think that maybe my questions about the backstory’s timeline in Behind the Throne were more about a general misunderstanding of how long things take in general, rather than specific historical misconceptions.
Incidentally, I used to do this sort of thing all the time in my own work–for example, when I was writing my first terrible fantasy stories way back when, someone who was kind enough to read what I’d written asked me if my characters were meant to be crazy people, because I’d described them all laughing for minutes at a time. It stuck with me to the point that I notice weird timing things in writing more often than most other readers do. You just have to kind of ignore it and laugh if you want to enjoy these novels.
That’s a pretty good summary of how to read this series, actually. They put aside realism for melodrama, detail for more melodrama, and plot for high fucking melodrama. Don’t think about it too hard, just sit back and enjoy the ride. The story hits all the right beats and makes all the right moves, and honestly sometimes that’s enough. Easy, pulpy reading that won’t push you super far.
After three books of it, though, I think I’m ready for a change to another kind of story.