I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The third book, called Risk Analysis, is a proper spy novel that manages to hit all the good tropes, while deftly avoiding the tedious ones. This review contains spoilers.
Every chapter starts with a flashback. The first one appears to make no sense. Maybe it's a nightmare? Somehow, Ejoq has found himself outside a spaceship...in jumpspace. What impossible circumstance could have possibly resulted in this scenario? Well, as it turns out that's what the book is going to be about.
I have to believe (because I haven't asked him personally) that this highly effective narrative sleight-of-hand was something David introduced during the editing process. I wasn't sold on it at first. It felt a little jarring to keep cutting to some scenario that didn't tie directly into the current timeline of the rest of the book. But eventually I came to understand that the book was leading up to the flashback (well, I guess they're technically flash-forward) events, but I also came to realise, delightfully slowly, that the flashbacks were about a double agent. Whomever it was that Ejoq was at odds with in these mystery flash-forward events is somebody in the story. That person is somebody you're getting to know over the course of 20 chapters, and it's up to you to try to guess who it is before Ejoq explains it to you.
Does it work?
You betcha. By the third or fourth chapter, I couldn't get enough of the flash-forwards. I got into the rhythm of them, I anticipated them. I gathered as much future evidence as I could. Did I correctly guess the identity of the double agent? Well, I've never been great at solving mysteries, and this book is no exception. The culprit was a total surprise to me. But hey, if I wanted something predictable I wouldn't be reading Stardrifter.
As is often the case in Stardrifter stories, the driving forces of the story are the seemingly incompatible dramas of characters and corporate culture. The first act of the book takes place aboard the Shady Lady, a tiny boat of maybe 3 or 4 rooms (cockpit, common room, bunk, and engineering) and an assortment of closets for duty stations. The crew consists of the pilot Mavis, engineer Dieter, mission lead Chris, sensor specialists John and Stinna, and of course Ejoq. It's a secret mission for an oversight organisation that needs intelligence about something happening in Corporatespace. The orgs involved, United Humanity (UH) and Meerschaum Agency, are big and influential, so doing well on this gig would be a valuable career boost for each team member, and the mission does involve actual spying, so there's a lot of pressure for a lot of different reasons for it to go smoothly.
Ejoq being who he is, drama arises pretty quickly on the Shady Lady. His crew mates find him abrasive, he finds them inefficent or obtuse. Half the time, I was annoyed with Ejoq and the other half the time I was convinced he was the smartest guy in the room. That's Ejoq. Not the hero we wanted, but the hero we needed?
What I found amusing was that Ejoq is perpetually confused by sensor specialist Stinna M'renda, but of all characters in any Stardrifter story so far, she's the single most identifiable character for me. She says exactly what needs to be said, no more and no less. When nothing needs to be said, she says nothing. She's good at what she does, and so she focuses on that, all day and all night. What's there not to understand? Well, apparently a lot because every time she speaks, Ejoq makes a note in the narrative that he had no idea how to interpret her reaction. It's one of the most entertaining relationships in the novel, although I'm strongly biased because the way Ejoq reacts to Stinna is pretty much how people have reacted to me my whole life. Strongly identify.
The second act of the novel focuses a lot on corporate culture and station life. It's got the same specificity as Motherload had for the engineering process, except it's about navigating internal politics of a typical top-heavy corporation. That probably doesn't sound exciting, and if you've ever worked in IT or R&D then it might even sound uncomfortable, but this is a spies-in-space story and it feels like it. Sure, the mid-level manager who hates your guts but can't get rid of you because his manager likes you might seem all-too familiar at first glance, but then Ejoq hacks a delivery drone to redirect some parts for a spaceship engine and suddenly you're reminded of the actual stakes. Ejoq isn't actually building a career. He's a spy. He's gathering evidence, plotting a get-away, and uncovering double-agents.
But wait, Ejoq is a double-agent himself. He's working for one corporation while secretly employed by another, and all the while his actual allegiance is to his shipmates.
And then the impossible happens. Ejoq gets a job as a double-agent within the job that is itself a double-agent job. So he's a spy working as a spy to spy on the corporation he's spying on. Don't overthink it, just believe it works, because it does.
There's a lot at stake, and you do empathise with the emotional drain on Ejoq, but at the same time the novel never descends into "undercover cop" tropes because frankly it never has to. You'll fill that stuff in for yourself. I did. I'm still angry at Ejoq for working on technology that the military actively is looking to adopt for itself. You'll have your own thoughts about his choices, about the lies he has to tell to preserve his own safety and the safety of his ship.
I often think that the strength of Stardrifter is its setting, because the Stardrifter universe is so highly detailed. You get the best technobabble in a Stardrifter story, and you want nothing more than to escape your boring old gravity well to go live on a station somewhere far away from people. And of course then the irony hits you, and you realise that what makes Stardrifter so entertaining is the people. Risk Analysis is a great story with lots of moving parts that threaten to break down should they collide, but the intrique happens in the conversations and relationships that develop over the course of the book. You develop relationships with the characters, too, and they'll inevitably surprise you. Subliminally, you fall into the same trap Ejoq arguably falls into. Do you let yourself get close to a character, knowing that they could betray you or die or just up and leave? Or do you perform a risk analysis on the relationship first?
There's a lot to think about after reading this book, even if you're not leading the life of a space secret-agent. And there's no better way to ponder your own emotional connection to people than through the lens of really really good science fiction, like Risk Analysis.