Reclamation

The Art of War Trilogy #1

by Richard Swan

Espionage, intelligence, warfare, politics, religion, diplomacy, genocide... the Reclamation has begun.

Tier Three: a compact of six vast interstellar empires, intricately bound by political, diplomatic and trade accords. Together, after centuries of massacres, brushfire wars, trade embargoes and political assassinations, they have finally brought a modicum of peace to a turbulent galaxy.

But all of it is about to unravel.

In deep space, the kaygryn inexplicably launch a suicidal attack on an Ascendancy crusade fleet; on the shared world of Uvolon, the Ascendancy shoots down a kaygryn corvette over the human city of Anternis.

Zavian Yano, a member of the United Nations’ élite Xeno Division diplomatic corps, has one job: to stop the provar and the kaygryn from going to war.

Strike Commander John Garrick, one of Solar Operations Command’s most senior generals, also has one job; but he has been side-lined by the President at the height of tensions.

On a rainy Uvolonese mountainside, Special Agent Lyra Staerck is killed by a kinetic railstrike, and must find out why.

And Captain Ben Vondur, a pilot in UNAF's 6th Goliath Squadron, has orders that seem designed only to inflame the situation.

Four people, separated by thousands of lightyears, are bound by fate.

And all the while the galaxy hurtles towards war…

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Fantasy

413 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 8, 2015

About the author

Richard Swan is a critically acclaimed British genre writer. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Empire of the Wolf and Great Silence trilogies, as well as fiction for Black Library and Grimdark Magazine. His work has been translated into ten languages.

Richard is a qualified lawyer, and before writing full time spent ten years litigating multimillion pound commercial disputes in London. He currently lives in Sydney with his wife and three young sons.


For updates follow him at stonetemplelibrary.com.

Reviews

[Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was thoroughly unprepared for how solidly good this was. Wow. From teh first page the world building was refreshingly good. Almost Peter F Hamilton good at some points. The writing, the characters, the action, the tech, the politics, just all above average to great. I'm already into book 2.

I'm so used to military-scifi being heavy on the guts and glory adn light on teh quality of writing and world building. Mr Swan, I am thoroughly impressed and will be reading all your fantasy soon too!

(A side note, I mostly listen to books these days, but there ISNT an audio version of this, and it's been very finny noticing how annoyed i get when i can't jsut pop the book on audio when ever i'm working. And it has somehow made it even more enjoyable.)

[Adrian Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Reclamation by Richard Swan, I have found a sci-fi series that scratches that itch left over from The Expanse. Having recently finished Swan’s brilliant fantasy novel The Tyranny of Faith I found myself wanting more of something that was just packed with awesomeness and fun to read. Reclamation delivered what I enjoy reading in absolute spades.

Cover for Reclamation by Richard SwanReclamation is the story of the escalation of political conflict driven in a hundred directions by a range of competing factions. This book is a mixture of political intrigue, espionage, and brutal military conflict. It is a story about biting off more than you can chew, and of the large and powerful becoming rather small and weak. The galaxy is colonised, other species have been met and treated with, but even as humanity has grown into the stars, the things that make humans brilliant to write about because of the conflicts created by our arrogance, greed, and stupidity remain.

Lyra is the salvaged head of a UN secret agent (yes, you read that right) who is the starting point for an interstellar incident, and the first storyteller to help us understand the multilayered tale Swan writes. Vondur is a Goliath pilot (I pictured these as epic mech-warriors) we are introduced to during the first major conflict between humankind and the provar (a large and brutal warrior caste species) since they signed their last treaty. He is the lens through which we generally see the military impact of the story. Yano is a diplomat / special envoy heading to a summit called to resolve Provar and Kaygrin (a more insect-like species, weaker and seemingly taken advantage of by both Provar and humanity) hostilites. He’s in the middle of two factions who hate each other at a level he cannot understand, and a hard nosed UN president primarily concerned with what the last few months of his term will leave as his legacy.

In addition to these key characters, a range of further POVs tell the story. All are important, none wasted, and they move the story forward at a Matthew Reilly pace.

Swan uses mystery, character, factional perspective, and misdirection brilliantly to build story. And if he managed this level of layering eight years ago self publishing this series, it’s no bloody wonder he’s achieved what he has with the first two novels of The Empire of the Wolf (The Justice of Kings 2022, The Tyranny of Faith 2023) once he was picked up by Orbit. Reclamation contains utterly magnificent storytelling as we follow the downward spiral of a galaxy.

Reclamation is a magnificent book with an abrupt ending that is either going to leave you throwing the book across the room in frustration, or sitting there smiling and envisaging the repercussions. That is, until you realise book two is already there, waiting for you.

Brilliantly told at a lightning fast pace, and layered with everything fans of space opera, military fantasy, and The Expanse love, Reclamation is a magnificent read that grimdark fans will enjoy. I cannot recommend it enough. Even better? All three books of The Art of War trilogy, a prequel, and two short stories are all already published and waiting for you–and if you’re anything like me, you’re going to want to read them all back-to-back.

[Terry Duckmanton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of two halves. It was only with great effort that I managed to continue reading what appeared to be a dry account of political machinations with far too many characters for my sieve of a brain to keep track of. I felt there had to be another direction in which the story could go.

Eventually, the story moves on to the people in the field who get to carry out the orders of the politicians. Action is introduced, but the reader is left guessing as to who is fighting whom and why. The second half of the book is a much more exciting read with the cliff-hanger at the end leaving the reader wanting to know more.

I have one gripe, the author uses the verb 'to relish' in a way which I feel is ungrammatical. Saying someone relishes in something just doesn't sound right to me. I expect better of British authors writing in what I expect to be proper English.

[Talya Stek · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ there are way too many characters. The first half is pretty slow and I couldn’t keep up with the revolving door of people but the second half was really interesting. This book is cynical and interesting and examines consequences of war. Tough start but excited where it’s going.

[Ed Crocker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assumptions are funny things. Take my reading habits. I read more self-published fantasy than traditionally published these days. Yet when I heard that Richard Swan, the irrepressibly jovial “major new voice of fantasy” behind The Empire of the Wolf series, had previously written a space opera trilogy of books that were self-published, I made some assumptions. It won’t be as good, right? It will be entertaining, but not that polished. It just isn’t going to be as good as the Justice of Kings, right? That book had the weight of trad pub and its editors behind it.

Well, as the most annoying person in the world once coined, to assume makes an ass out of u and me. Because Reclamation, the first book in the Art of War trilogy, is outrageously good. It is wildly imaginative, and features one of the best space battles I’ve ever read. And it combines a refreshing mix of action with tense diplomacy and politics that will be familiar and welcome to those who enjoyed this boundary-pushing blend in the Empire of the Wolf.

In fact, I think I enjoyed it more than the Justice of Kings. Yeah, you heard me. And that book was in my top three fantasies of last year. Do I have some explaining to do? You bet I do. Good job my reviews are longer than the Nile.

Reclamation has a fairly standard sci-fi set up. Humans have spread throughout the galaxy, the largest group represented by the United Nations, who have, fans of mid-2000s politics will be relieved to hear, survived into galactic format. They are one of six “tier three” species, i.e. the other races in the galaxy who have mastered interstellar travel and colonisation. When one of these other races, the Kaygryn, begins to attack the ships of another, the Provar, galactic war looms, and the planet at the centre of this budding war, Alternis, happens to have a human colony. Thus, the UN must intervene to try and prevent war; on the ground on Alternis, a solider and a spy team up to discover who is really behind the hostilities, while on another planet a diplomat must make a success of a peace conference where all the other tier-three species have arrived to avoid war.

The first thing to say is that Swan has clearly mastered that art peculiar to sci-fi novels of throwing a bunch of advanced tech in your face on a sentence-by-sentence basis. This is a requirement particular to space opera; where other genres parcel out their worldbuilding, in this genre it is perfectly acceptable to bombard you in the face with it constantly and, when done well, it gives the well-versed sci-fi reader a constant endorphin rush, as in the initial chapters every sentence contains about five great ideas. Swan gives particular love to the construction of ships and weaponry, and joins that rank of sci-fi writers who seem to have eaten an engineering degree for breakfast. It’s a whirlwind of ideas that immediately puts this series in the top-tier ranking.

More specifically, a great piece of tech interwoven throughout the book is the IHD, a sort of Google Glass on steroids that’s interfaced with your brain. This idea of a piece of brain kit that can control how you see the world AND how you control your own body is hardly new to sci-fi, but Swan really commits to this in an admirable way and we see not only how it operates to control external data but also how it reduces shock, controls pain, and… makes sex better (more of which later). He’s really thought about it and it’s seriously cool.

Another fun piece of tech is the Goliath mecha-suits, which I imagined as much sleeker and advanced version of Ripley’s “get away from her, you Bitch” rig in Aliens but which were probably based off something in Halo. It’s a cool piece of weaponised kit that leads to a couple of very fun scenes.

Also, every good sci-fi novel needs some bizarre injury, and when one character gets extremely badly injured in a way that would definitely be a spoiler, we get a strange and inspired virtual reality interlude as they struggle to access their memories.

Tech aside, Swan also ticks the “cool space battle” box and then some. In fact, the space battle that takes place between one large ship and three seriously unmatched smaller ones is so tense and unbelievably gripping that I can’t remember a better one. It’s an astonishing section of the book that left me breathless, and has me very excited for more throughout the trilogy. Swan knows that the secret to a space battle is not just the action but the sense of doubt amidst it: will they attack? When will they attack? In fact the best part is prior to the space battle itself, when desperate communication ends in the horrifying realisation that the battle itself is due to take place. It’s a bravura scene from (at that point) a sci-fi newbie.

What makes this first book really stand out though is the same thing that makes Justice of Kings, and its remarkable follow up The Tyranny of Faith so notable: the focus on politics, and people in rooms failing in various ways to make things better. In his fantasy series, Swan adds a legal edge to this; here it’s all abut the diplomacy. And what fun he has here. The UN diplomat Yano is tasked with trying to communicate with the militant religious arseholes the Provar at a peace treaty. Except their language is based partly on vocal modulation and tone, which is great when you have a series of specialised vocal chords like them, not so great when you’re a human. What follows is a glorious scene in which Yano attempts to communicate basic requests while they fly into increasing bouts of rage. Do they not understand, or are they just dicks? Such vagaries are at the heart of diplomacy and Swan puts just as much effort into these scenes as the space battles, making this a book for West Wing lovers just as it is for fans of the Expanse.

Speaking of the diplomat Yano, what a character. An elite, narcissistic agent, he has been genetically engineered to be able to seduce any woman and be completely charming. A sci-fi James Bond, if you will, who talks rather than shoots. Swan has a lot of fun with this, so much so you can’t help but grin as Yano uses the IHD program 2climax to make sure he... climaxes, obviously, at the same time with yet another woman he is bedding (told you I’d come back to the sex). Luckily the reader has a lot of fun too, and if it sounds a little seedy, that is the point; as one woman tells him (I may be paraphrasing) he is of course full of shit.

That said, neither he nor any of the other characters come close to the impact that his instantly iconic fantasy MC Sir Konrad Vonvalt has in his Empire of the Wolf Series. This (so far) is not really a series about character arcs; it’s about corruptive politics and subtle diplomacy and empire and big suits firing things at big spaceships and going BLAM (and that’s fine).

Finally, we must speak of the politics. Because if the first part is cool battles, and the next third is cool diplomacy, then the final third, apart from being full of twists and incredible stakes raising for the next book (that ending…) switches focus to the politics and failings of empire. This will again be familiar to fans of the Empire of the Wolf series, where a major colonial power must face up to its sins as internal factions and toxic politics tears it apart. Here, we see the full failings of the mighty UN, and get a whole heap of political allegories into the bargain. You can tell this was written in the post Iraq war landscape, as we get renditioning, torture, attempts to install exiles who promise based on faulty intelligence that they can take over the regime and install a friendly puppet regime… it’s all great fun while being an intelligent critique too.

Oh, and in case you haven’t guessed yet, this is grimdark sci-fi (if that’s a thing); so people die constantly in imaginative ways, and if you like someone’s brains suddenly exploding over everyone else in the room (and why the hell wouldn’t you?) then you’re going to love this.

Overall, this is triumphant, statement-making sci-fi that gets all the basics right while mining the possibilities for diplomacy and politics to add all the complex layering you want from epic space opera. It’s pacy and wickedly written and ridiculous amounts of fun, and I enjoyed it more than the Justice of Kings (though not it’s bravura sequel Tyranny of Faith, I'm not completely crazy) and I reckon I’ve written enough to justify that, so if that shocks you then that, dear reader, is on you.

[Roland Swan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

In short, a thoroughly exciting and engaging book. I enjoyed immersing myself in this new galaxy. I cannot wait for the second book to come out.

[Shaun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reclamation is The Guns of August for space opera fanatics.

Swan has constructed a universe in which intrigue swirls, resentments simmer in the dark, and a fatal blend of arrogance and complacency are about to bring an entire galaxy into an agonizingly violent war. Secrets are layered on secrets, and no one here appears entirely without some sort of hidden agenda–or if they are, they’re fillers who rapidly wind up dead. My only complaint is that this took a while to get going, but once it did it was a no holds barred descent into a war which, like World War I, shouldn’t have happened if there had been a few cooler heads around.

I read this based on a review by by Ed Crocker who found it enormously enjoyable. (See for yourself at: https://www.ed-crocker.com/post/recla... ) Never having read any of Swan’s fantasy, I was curious–and immediately got sucked in. It’s an interesting comment on the SFF genre that a 468 page tome struck me as being only “moderately long.” Swan generally goes a good job keeping the far-flung plot threads and disparate collection of characters vivid and interesting, particularly in the last quarter of the book. I’m likely to look at the rest of the series based on this taste test.

7/10 (3.5 stars, rounded up)

[C Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent political thriller that just happened to be set in space. The geopolitics and diplomacy were well done, and Swan made the slide towards war (inevitably obvious to the reader) seem plausible due to the combination of events, Hawks, conspiracy and idiots.

The alien cultures depicted were good, and they are often badly done even in good sci-fi.

Minor complaints - super quick FTL travel and communication make it all a bit too easy to get things done, but it does mean the pace can be maintained.

And the conspiracy... While the Kaygryn part made sense, the human involvement made little sense and their goals were handwaved away in favour of events. What possible outcome did they want? Nothing in the book to that point made it look like they were doing anything but near-dooming their own species. Minus one star for that.

Overall - excellent scifi. Well worth a read.

[Christian Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting amalgam of different sci-fi ideas and staples of the genre written convinced with detail and nuance that keeps you engaged. Opens the story on a slightly darker in tone series with no real good guys apparently anywhere.

[lev pouliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

did not give a shit, not even readable til halfway through. 3 stars is honestly generous and founded predominantly on an interesting world context; unfortunately, neither the actualization or the characters through which you perceive it are well-developed or interesting in any way.

[Michael Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Complex characters and plot moves along nicely. Decent length you can get into.
Plenty of surprises am downloading next one now

[Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't like Reclamation as much as the author's later The Justice of Kings (which I thought was really something special), but it's still an excellent military/political sci-fi about the relationship between two vast empires escalating from grudging peace to all-out war.

[tobes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it a lot, definitely has room to grow

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly good.

[Greg Sykes · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made it 250 pages but found I honestly could not care less about any of the characters or the plot. Not for me!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to this series having read his more recent books, with no great expectations to start with as they seemed very different And they are. However, these are a good fun read. If you go into this series with the expectations of a good fun, and complete story arc, then you will have fun.

There was nothing earth-shatteringly original here, but definitely worth a read of the series.

[MIKE ROBERTS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think before you buy

In my opinion the author spends WAY to much time on unimportant details. He develops characters only to kill them off. He tries to explain everything and in doing so bored me to the point of almost putting the book away. The end of the book finally picked up the pace with some decent action. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you love a lot of useless details about things that don't have any bearing on the book.

[John Willson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got a few chapters in before giving up. Dozens of characters introduced, none developed. Scene after undramatic scene of fetishistic technobabble are aimed solely at plot justification.

If you'd like to read a detailed military dossier on an interstellar war, this book is for you.