I recently reviewed Embers of War by Gareth Powell. A few weeks later, I’ve finished the trilogy. Here are my thoughts.

It has been years since I read a sequel immediately after reading the first book in a series. I normally alternate fiction and non-fiction. In this case, I made an exception. I’m glad I did.

In many ways, the writing and story improved as the novels progressed. Each of the three books felt like an act in a larger story, which many other series fail to achieve. The climax of the first novel informs the second, Fleet of Knives. However, Fleet raises the stakes from Embers. The same is true of the third book, Light of Impossible Stars.

Also, the new characters in Fleet and Light did not irritate me as Ashton Childe did in Embers. The new characters in both books ended up having character arcs of their own, whereas I felt like Childe existed merely as a catalyst to bring a change in others. In Fleet and Light, we see how all these characters are changed by their circumstances and choices.

There another pitfall that Powell avoids, that’s common to movies as well. It’s easy to find examples of books and movies where the middle installments do not stand alone, but instead only act as a long prologue to the next part. A recent example is Jim Butcher’s Peace Talks, which is a long prologue for the following novel Battle Ground. Another glaring example is The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, in which a person can skip the first movie or first half of the book. The story seemed to me only existed to emphasize how bad things were for Harry, Hermione, and Ron. When events start picking up at the beginning of the next part, that’s when the story regains interest.

I’m happy to report that Fleet of Knives stands on its own, and so does Light of Impossible Stars. At the end of Embers, there’s an event that changes the lives of all the characters in the story. Fleet explores the consequences of that event, and our heroes old and new come face to face with a new challenge. The new challenge is inherently interesting, and was worth a novel to explore. In dealing with that challenge on a local, personal level, they realize more is at stake than they realized, and those stakes drive Light. In structuring the plot this way, each installment is enjoyable as a discreet story. At the end of each story, people are changed profoundly, yet the tapestry of their intersecting lives form a coherent story.

It’s akin to the original Star Wars trilogy. At the end of the A New Hope, it appears that all is well with the world. So it is at the end of Embers. However, The Empire Strikes Back shows that the climax of A New Hope was just a setback for the Empire. Like Empire, Fleet shows that there’s more to the story than we first suspected in Embers. And, like Return of the Jedi, Light of Impossible Stars features a reckoning.

It’s not a Rebellion versus Empire story, though there are political factions in Embers of War. One of the elements I most enjoyed about the Embers of War trilogy is the House of Reclamation. The House is a place for people looking for a fresh start, and its mission is to rescue ships and people in distress. To join, people must renounce their citizenship and sever ties with their former governments. Our protagonists are trying to redeem the sins of their pasts, to greater and lesser degrees of success. This theme of redemption plays strongly throughout the novels, and that is what drew my comparison to the Star Wars trilogy.

Reading the Embers of War novels back to back, I did find some of the remembrances of past events distracting. An author has to make sure that a reader who picks up the second book in a series isn’t lost, and Gareth Powell does that here. However, for those of us who read about those events yesterday, we don’t need reminding.

In many cases, though, the callbacks to previous events seemed natural. Characters reflect on prior events as they experience loss and grief, in some cases remembering lost comrades to each other. The net effect is that the main characters had some depth and verisimilitude.

The later books also explore some of the milieu and trappings introduced in the first books. In particular, the vessels in this series are intelligent and characters in their own right. The ship Trouble Dog becomes a well-rounded character in her own right. I’ve seen multiple authors introduce elements like sentient ships, but fail to illustrate the consequences of there being sentient ships. Powell embraces this aspect of world-building, to my delight.

I recommend the series, and I’m excited that it’s coming to television.