Wolf's Empire: Gladiator (Christian and Buchanan)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
In the spring of 2019, I attended a science-fiction convention, Heliosphere NY. The announcement for 2020 stated that Claudia Christian of Babylon 5 fame was going to be one of the two Author Guests of Honor the following year. I was unaware that she cowrote a book, but I immediately signed up for 2020 and put the book on reserve at the library.
Fast forward a bunch of months, and the library deletes the request and says it doesn't have the book. A few months after that, Christian and Buchanan cancel because of a "scheduling conflict". Shortly after that, the con goes online because of the pandemic, and the library finds the book and sends it to my local branch.
And then the libraries closed, so I had plenty of time to read the hefty tome. I needed it. Especially because I put it down a few times.
The quick review, even though this isn't really a review, is that it's way too long. And I knew it would be a saga from the colon in the title.
The story is set in a future where the Roman Empire never fell. Instead, it grew and took over the galaxy, which got divided into the seven houses, like the seven hills of Rome, with each house still having a presence on Earth. Throughout all that time, it's still a patriarchal society, although women can pursue many occupations and be fighters and gladiators.
Accala Viridius is a noblewoman who becomes a gladiator, training with a semi-intelligent boomeranging super-discus, which also appears to be one of a kind, because nobody else uses one despite how amazingly useful it is. Her mother and brother are killed when the planet they were on was bombed by another house. Now she wants revenge against that house. Her father just wants her to not bring shame to the family. She tries to enter the Imperial Games where she confront and even kill her enemies. Her father prevents this from happening. In the end, the Sertorian house, which bombed that far-away planet and murdered her family, wants her to join their side. After some convincing from her uncle, a high muckety-muck in House Wolf, she becomes a mock-Hawk. As the action unfolds, you would think it was a Hawk's Empire, not the Wolf's. And that is what that house aspires to.
The Imperial Games, which are supposed to settle any civil war, are set to take place on that same planet Accala's family perished on. There's a long trip with training and proving herself, and then a gruelling race. The race makes absolutely no sense.
Each house sports a team with 8 players for the entire gladitoral combat. But first there's a gruelling trek across the hostile planet with combat between the houses. One wouldn't expect all the combatants to survive the trip to the arena in the first place. In fact, many don't, but more survive that you might expect. Granted, the Sertorian team is cheating through the use of ambrosia to make them superhuman, and it's still difficult.
Not even halfway through the book and you're screaming to get to the arena already, or just blow the whole thing up. Okay, so the latter happens.
If I have another problem with the basic story it'd be this: in many tales, the protagonist loses everything but then rises to become a hero in spite of it. In others, the hero has to lose everything before they can truly become great. This is the latter, where so much is lost, you have to stop and wonder -- "Wouldn't a real hero have been able to prevent some of this? Any of this?"
Many characters lose everything near and dear to them, friends, relatives, limbs, their lives ... but some of them get better. It gets to the point where they could literally be taken apart and put back together again. But are they still human?
I couldn't wait to get to the end of this, and I don't feel any need to run out and get the next book. Since the library didn't list another book, that would be another strike against it.
Note: over 500 pages.
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