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Sarah Hoyt has written a series of three very fine SF novels
which are recognized by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) as either a
winner or nominee for Best Novel.
Darkship Thieves (2010) won the LFS’ 2011 Prometheus
Award, and its sequels, Darkship Renegades (2012) and
A Few Good Men (2013) were nominee finalists more recently. The love of freedom goes through all of these
books. Hoyt’s characters are always
well-drawn, there are heroes and heroines aplenty, and her descriptions of
family dynamics are always interesting. Bio-engineering
is a big controversy in this future world, as are the age-old arguments on Liberty
vs. Power.
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The first book, Darkship Thieves – which
is dedicated to Robert A. Heinlein – introduces us to a far future where Earth
is governed feudally by an oligarchy of 50 “Good Men.” Our protagonist, the Patrician Athena Hera
Sinistra is a heroic young woman with a lot of fight in her. There is action and mystery right off the bat
on her father’s spaceship out beyond Earth.
Athena must escape this ship because she is attacked by the bodyguard
goons serving her father, the Patrician “Good Man” Sinistra. (Everyone in her family lineage is left-handed.)
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In her flight she runs into a Darkship Thief named Kat, who is
from a society of refugees who had fled Earth centuries ago and who now inhabit
an obscure asteroid named Eden. It is a
society without government, yet with traditions of justice. Athena settles in on Eden but must go back to
Earth for an emergency, and the tyranny on Earth puts her and Kat in grave danger. [“Is there any other kind?”] There is a ghastly family secret about her
father and the other Good Men ruling Earth.
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Darkship Renegades continues the story of Athena,
Kat and his family, and it explores the political nature of Eden. A tyranny is developing in Eden, although
there is no legal system. It is a tyranny
of the Energy Board. What makes the Board
so powerful is that it is a traditionally inherited family monopoly of the directors’
positions of what is traditionally a collective-ownership of energy resources. With no actual private property in energy,
and no tradition of competition within the energy sector, the Board uses their
monopoly directorship’s control of vital energy to threaten and control
everyone in Eden. And it’s getting grim
and violent. To break the monopoly by putting energy technology into private hands,
Athena and friends must return to Earth to get long-lost info on energy tech – with
troubles confronting them again on that planet of tyrants.
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A Few Good Men is in the same world and
timeline as the first two novels, but it shifts its focus onto different
characters more this time. All the
action takes place on Earth, and there is revolution in the air against the Good
Men’s oligarchy. We have heroic
characters again, and their basic principle is the individual’s right to “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
It is an excellent story. The
debates about freedom are believable – because they parallel in many ways the
real historical debates among the American Founders. Hoyt has one character give a very brief but
vital distinction between the principles of the historical American and French
Revolutions, and the results that followed from each.
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Highly recommended. I hope she adds more to the series in the future. Read
the novels in their proper order. I
could not find paper copies here, so I got them on Kindle.
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-Zenwind.
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