Pam's Book Log

11 October, 2002

This is the third book in Smith's Jani Killian series, and it's the best of the three thus far published. The first did a respectable job of introducing the characters and the setting, in the context of a straightforward mystery plot. The second wrapped up many of the loose ends from the first, and introduced some more characters, but it lacked a really coherent plot, and contained less cool alien stuff than the first one, so it kind of made me worry about the direction of the series.

However, Smith really seems to have hit her stride in this third installment. Having firmly established Jani's character and resolved her past, Smith finally puts her to use in a real scifi-type plot. It starts when some government types from the previous book present Jani with a document which seems to an offer from the idomeni ambassador-- who is also Jani's old friend and mentor-- to act as a spy for the human government. The government wants to take him up on the offer, and wants Jani to act as an intermediary. For her part, she wants nothing to do with it, and is sure that the document is a forgery, part of a plot to discredit Tsecha (the ambassador) and destabilize human-idomeni relations. Before she knows it, Jani is hip-deep in trouble: corrupt government officials (of both the human and alien varieties), an interstellar criminal organization, assassins after her, her family, and friends. All of this, of course, is accompanied by Jani's perpetual psychological and health problems.

While the interactions between humans and the alien idomeni pretty much stayed in the background in the first two novels, they are at the forefront in this one. I like stories about human-alien contact. Not necessarily firstcontact, where the focus is often on the shock and newness of the first-contact experience, but stories like Empire of Bones which examine the deeper, long-term effects of human-alien contact. Even better are stories which show how the contact affects the aliens in addition to how it affects humans. Law of Survival fits that bill. Both the human and idomeni societies are divided by class, and contact with the aliens provides the underclasses on both sides with opportunities and choices which would have been otherwise unavailable to them, much to the chagrin of their respective overclasses. While the current state of affairs has folks aligned along species lines, it seems clear that a new political order is developing, one which will pit the upstart human colonies and the idomeni outcast Haárin groups against the entrenched ruling classes on both sides. This sea change in interstellar politics is at the heart of this book, and the increased focus on this aspect of the series is a great change for the better.

One might think that increasing the focus on external events would be accompanied by a corresponding decrease on the personal, character-oriented angle of the plot, but it's quite the opposite here. All the intrigue and action provides a good framework for character development-- particularly in Jani's interpersonal relationships, but also in how she sees herself. Jani has not always been a sympathetic character, but in this book, she addresses and acknowledges some of the things which have vexed me about her. It's always good when characters develop.

At the heart of the novel, and tied into the interstellar intrigue plot, are Jani's relationships with her old teacher Tsecha, and that with her enigmatic lover, Lucien Pascal. Both characters are developed much more deeply than they were in previous volumes, which made me happy because I really liked what I saw of them in the other books. In my discussion of Book 2, I commented that I thought that Pascal had the potential to be much more interesting than he had been to date, and he certainly fulfills that potential in this volume. (Tsecha was always interesting, but he pretty much disappeared in the second book.) He's not really a nice person (although he's got good manners), but he is, as Kate might put it, very much himself. Saying much more would be a spoiler, so I'll just say that Jani and Lucien's relationship is a rather interesting, if unconventional, romance between two people who are psychologically broken in such a way that they're fundamentally incapable of forming a normal romantic pairing.

This book represents, IMO, a major leap forward in the quality of Smith's writing. Her first two books were decent, but this one is actually really good. It's got complex, well-thought-out human-alien relations, interesting characters who develop and change over the course of the novel, well-paced action, and romance, all combined into a single, coherent story. I'm really happy I continued reading the series past the second book, and I'm looking forward to the next installment. I'd almost recommend that new readers simply start with this book, but I think one would be missing too much important backstory.