Darktraders

by Rosemary Edghill

TWO SHIPS SAT ON THE FIELD They was 'leggers and pirates equipped with the standard box of tricks. Tractors to lock them on to a ship or free-floating cargo, guns that could angle to protect a ship on the ground. And a nasty sense of civic duty. They was going to hold us on the heavy-side and hammer us to death. They hoped. I gave Ghost Dance all the go-devils in the inventory, to where I was sure something was going to cut loose and blow. She started pulling away, and the view-screens went fade-to-black as the darktraders on the field gunned their engines to hold her. I opened a wide channel. Both ships would hear it. “This is Ghost Dance. We’ve got fifteen plates of goforth and nothing to lose. You boys want to be serious nonfiction you just hang on; I guarantee to wrap you around the first lamppost in angeltown.’’ No answer. Just the howl of an open circuit. Dance was starting to shake. “I mean it. When you forged your First Tickets, anybody tell you what happens you Jump too deep in a gravity well?” Silence. “Want to find out?”

292 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 31, 2023

About the author

She was born long enough ago to have seen Classic Trek on its first outing and to remember that she once thought Spock Must Die! to be great literature. As she aged, she put aside her fond dreams of taking over for Batman when he retired, and returned to her first love, writing. Her first SF sale (as Eluki Bes Shahar) was the Hellflower series, in which Damon Runyon meets Doc Smith over at the old Bester place. Between books and short stories in every genre but the Western (several dozen so far), she's held the usual selection of odd and part-time writer jobs, including bookstore clerk, secretary, beta tester for computer software, graphic designer, book illustrator, library clerk, and administrative assistant for a non-profit arts organization. She can truthfully state that she once killed vampires for a living, and that without any knowledge of medicine has illustrated half-a-dozen medical textbooks.


Her last name -- despite the efforts of editors, reviewers, publishing houses, her webmaster, and occasionally her own fingers -- is not spelled 'Edgehill'.


Also writes under the name Eluki Bes Shahar.

Reviews

[Robert Jenner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd heard of the Hellflower trilogy by eluki bes shahar for a long time, but until last year or so they weren't available online. I eventually found a Science Fiction Book Club copy of the entire series on eBay, but lugging a big book around at work isn't ideal. So I was excited when the Hellflower series finally came out on ebook, especially with new and outstanding covers by Laura Givens and under the author's pen-name, and now apparently her legal name, Rosemary Edghill. Unfortunately the editing needs work. The text is filled with bad paragraph breaks and misplaced dialogue, so it's occasionally hard to tell who's speaking. I stuck with it for about halfway through, then I just gave up went back to my old hardcover and could understand what was happening a lot more easily.

The book, however, is an excellent read. We pick up just after "Hellflower" left off, as Butterflies-are-free Peace Sincere tries her best to figure out, first, how to get her sidekick Valijon Starbringer, aka "Tiggy Stardust", back to his father in one piece; the boy now insists that Butterfly calls him by his real name Valijon, so they compromise and she calls him "Baijon", or Boy-Jon. Secondly, to stop the diabolical Mallorum Archangel and his plans to restore the machine intelligences of the Old Federation, and thirdly, would it be too much to get paid, and maybe get herself a new ship? She also has to deal with a subtle voice in her head telling her things she shouldn't know, with memories of events she never experienced, many of them from a thousand years ago at the end of the Old Federation. There's action, adventure, space battles and thrilling escapes.

What separates "Darktraders" from lighter space operas is the genuine emotion that develops between the main characters, which means the stakes are higher as the people in Butterfly's orbit aren't just sidekicks, comrades-in-arms or fellow travelers, but people she simply can't afford to lose, no matter what Baijon's ideas about honor and the pursuit of glory have to say about it. She feels the consequences of such a loss acutely already. With Paladin gone, her former partner and the person she loved, the reader no longer has a source of clear, impartial emotional insights into Butterfly's character and the nature of the world she lives in; however, Butterfly actually shares this loss with the audience, as she comes to realize how much she relied on Paladin, not only for emotional support, but to help the galaxy she lives in make sense to her. Butterfly spends a lot of the story having to deal with her feelings for Paladin, a wound that's still fresh.

She doesn't particularly have time to do that, of course, what with all the bad actors playing dice with an entire galaxy and the lives of billions of people. There's an ever-present edge of desperation in Butterfly's narration of events that lends an extra edge to space battles, combat, exciting escapades, etc. Keeping Baijon alive despite his youth, innocence and hotheadedness isn't simply a matter of honor for her. If he dies, if she loses him like she lost Paladin, it will kill her inside.

This novel takes a traditional place in a trilogy, serving as a bridge between the explosive first act and what I assume will be the epic conclusion, however it's great fun and a great ride regardless of the middle child factor. I debated how to rate this considering the editing issues, but finally decided I'm going to loan Darktraders the last star on credit in the hope of a corrected edition. Darktraders, and the entire Hellflower trilogy, is quality space opera from an era when an author could sell books even if they tried something different. Some readers might be turned off by Butterfly's first-person narration in her snarky spacer patois, but those willing to be challenged by a text and give some extra thought to what they're reading will be amply rewarded.