Tribes

by GW Morgan, Don Ciers

A Message to the Earthers of Sol. Under my command, the Commonwealth of Stellar States Fleet Task Force Draken successfully conducted due diligence reconnaissance of your galactic sector, AEWX-0449, over a time period equivalent to your Sol-Earth Common Era year 2014, that is, roughly equivalent to our common stellar year 771CE. As a result, the Senate of the Common Stellar States has scheduled the first debates to consider the enlightenment of the Sol-Earth tribe with a non-Aligned trans-stellar political status. As an interim measure, you, Sol-Earthers are presented a series of stories that hold great historical significance to us in the Commonwealth. These eight ‘literaries’, what you call books, are structured to allow you to begin to understand significant political, economic and strategic realities prevalent in the known central and outer metropolitan regions of our galaxy and their root causes. The contemporary settings of this work, ‘Tribes’ and the ‘Commoners of Draken’, frame the historical dramas, ‘Shatrujeet!’ and the serialized ‘The Praetor and the Second Alliance War’. These works portray the momentous events in our region just over 350 years ago, through the eyes of those who were there. My troopers have brought back many of your books, cinemas and music purchased during their year among your people. Hopefully, these are the first of many such exchanges as the debate begins and we Commoners work towards more open and prosperous relations with your tribe. ‘Commoners of Draken’, will tell the story of Operation Dragoon, my task force’s pursuit and capture of the Sacorsti research vessel Retnec, and Dragoon II, our discovery of Sol-Earth in November 2013, by your Common Era calendar, and the surface reconnaissance over the subsequent year. Earthers, there have always been two types of human tribes in our galaxy. Those who have recognized the existence of other human tribes are called enlightened. Those tribes who, for various reasons have not are simply called unenlightened. Enlightened tribes communicate and trade with one another as non-aligned political entities or as members of any one of the several trans-stellar leagues, such as our Common Stellar States, our close contemporary, the Valerian Monarchy, or our most significant adversary, the Sacorsti Alliance. Enlightenment is a seminal event in the history of any global population. While not an end in itself, enlightenment is a transition of a world’s tribe into the community surrounding them. Accepting the universality of Man and the similarity of tribal development between worlds, at least in our known galaxy, is perhaps the greatest challenge a newly enlightened tribe must face. ‘Tribes’, introduces the Commonwealth of Stellar States and the Sacorsti Alliance in the closing days of the fourth Alliance War, through the eyes of several of the participants in the events leading up to Operation Dragoon, the mission that brought my force to your region. As the final battle raged, and negotiations filled diplomatic back-channels, the former Alliance Senior Lieutenant Nadia Tinor, and her valiant crew took advantage of the confusion to make a daring escape from Sacorsti tyranny. This set events in motion that led ultimately to Task Force Draken’s discovery of your Sol-Earth tribe and your neighbors in the regions you call the Centauri group and Tau Ceti. This remarkable woman, Nadia Tinor, and her intrepid crew, are fully deserving of the highest praise. G.W. Morgan, Retired Commodore, Commonwealth Combined Fleet.

514 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 23, 2013

Reviews

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I read a great deal of SF this story is heavily on the side of spacefaring war and military hardware. This makes it difficult for me to get into and that is why I am not giving it more stars, but a person who wants exactly the above out of a book will doubtless love it and appreciate the details a lot more than I did.

A war is raging in space between two cultures on a quasi-religious basis. Like the Conquistadores the mission 'to convert' is more likely to kill and subjugate other races believed to be lesser because of skin colour or other factors. Males and females appear to have equality in the ship we first meet; unfortunately this is reflected in the women of status acting like men of status in bygone days, ordering the ensign boy to their cabin. Senior Lieutenant Nadia Tinor discovers that a rebellious President has been arrested and frozen in a stasis container for many years unknown to most people; now with battle damage and a revolt on board ship, the lady may have to be restored to life.

All of this takes some picking out of the pages of descriptions of spacefaring history and politics, unfamiliar names bombarding us and orders being given by people we don't know. The tense shifts between past and present from sentence to sentence within a paragraph; from has to had and will to was or is. This gives the book the feeling of having been translated from a language which does not like to use the conditional tense. Combined with many new terms before we get involved in a person's story and little explanation of each term as we go, the feeling of paddling on the surface of the book, rather than diving deeply into it, remained with me.

Amusingly there are some familiar terms too such as dragoons, marine fusiliers and troopers. Other terms such as boomer make themselves clear; that one is a PA system on board ship. Italian-derived words such as mezzanine and gelato make an appearance and after all that space dust and electrical wire smoke, who wouldn't want a nice gelato? Such moments come across as very human.
Just as we were having a nice sit down however, discussing cattle breeding and cinemas, the book abruptly went into another political history lecture, from which straight to the index. I missed any real ending.

I'm not the best person to comment on the military machine and warfare described in this book, but 'Midshipman's Hope' by Feintuch it's not, nor is it 'Use of Weapons' by Banks. I got into both of those books no problem and really enjoyed them. If you also read those but would like to take the details of war in space further, with race and religion thrown in as motivations, this book and the series which follows could well be for you.

[Misty · Rating 1 out of 5]

I encountered this book while part of a Space Opera FB group. I like to support new authors, so I bought it, it was only a few bucks. I feel bad for the guy, but this book is so badly written I didn't make it past page six. If you collect examples of really bad writing, go for it.

[Jeffrey Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! I'm a big fan of science fiction and Ciers spins a good tale.