Book Review | Katya's War by Jonathan L. Howard

The battle lines have been drawn. The people of Russalka turn upon one another in a ruthless and unwavering civil war even while their world sickens and the deep black ocean is stained red with their blood. As the young civilisation weakens, its vitality fuelling the opposing militaries at the cost of all else, the war drums beat louder and louder.

Katya Kuriakova knows it cannot last. Both sides are exhausted. It can only be a matter of days or weeks before they finally call a truce and negotiate. But the days and weeks pass, the death toll mounts, and still the enemy will not talk. Then a figure from the tainted past returns to make her an offer she cannot lightly refuse: a plan to stop the war. But to do it she will have to turn her back on everything she has believed in, everything she has ever fought for, to make sacrifices greater even than laying down her own life.

To save Russalka, she must become its greatest enemy.

***

In an appealing and endearing departure from his dark comedy novels starring the necromancer and detective Johannes Cabal, Jonathan L. Howard engineered a wonderful underwater world in the fun-filled first volume of The Russalka Chronicles.

Katya's World introduced us to a girl who had to grow up fast when she was drawn into a conflict that spiralled out of control quickly, and has continued to do so since. Colonised by human forces many moons ago before being abandoned, and at the last attacked, Russalka was recently rocked by an uprising of rebels determined to wrest control from the FMA. It follows, then, that in Katya's War, we see this world at its worst.

The world had been much simpler then. Now, however... now she'd seen the kind of people who start wars at first hand. The experience had not filled her with confidence that they would be doing everything in their power to bring things to a peaceful conclusion. The FMA was furious with the Yagizban because the Yags had betrayed them not once but twice, first conspiring with the Terrans during the war, and then by preparing for a Terran return that never came. For their part, the Yagizban were sick of the Federals for getting into a war with Earth in the first place, and then using it as an excuse for never-ending martial law. They would fight like zmey over a manta-whale carcass, until one of them was dead, and the manta was torn to pieces. (p.46)

Very sensibly, Katya has kept her own council since the war kicked off. Just making her meagre ends meet has been enough to keep busy with, and were it not for the insistence of a few familiar faces, she'd have been happy to keep at this neverending quest for cargo to transport.

The legendary Yagizban pirates Havilland Kane and Tasya Morevna have other plans for her, however. They capture Kayta and forcibly escort her to a fallen facility where the awful cost of the war is in evidence: the bodies of innocent men, women and children are everywhere. Why? She can't help but wonder. And for what?

Book Review | Katya's World by Jonathan L. Howard

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The distant and unloved colony world of Russalka has no land, only the raging sea. No clear skies, only the endless storm clouds. Beneath the waves, the people live in pressurised environments and take what they need from the boundless ocean. It is a hard life, but it is theirs — and they fought a war against Earth to protect it. But wars leave wounds that never quite heal, and secrets that never quite lie silent...

Katya Kuriakova doesn't care much about ancient history like that, though. She is making her first submarine voyage as crew; the first nice, simple journey of what she expects to be a nice, simple career. There is nothing nice and simple about the deep black waters of Russalka, however. Soon she will encounter pirates and war criminals, see death and tragedy at first hand, and realise that her world's future lies on the narrowest of knife edges. For in the crushing depths lies a sleeping monster, an abomination of unknown origin, and when it wakes, it will seek out and kill every single person on the planet.

***

Having cut his comedic teeth writing the Broken Sword series of point and click puzzle games, and honed them to a sharp point through three novels starring Johannes Cabal, the renowned necromancer and detective, Jonathan L. Howard continues his mission to maintain a presence on bookstore shelves with the first volume of The Russalka Chronicles, and I bet it'll be his greatest success yet.

Katya's world is dystopian, of course. "But for its polar ice caps, there was not even a square meter of dry land on the whole planet," (p.7) yet when a probe finds a veritable treasure trove of rare minerals in the oceans of RIC-23, folks from all across Russia are brought in to colonise it in any case. They name their harsh new home after "a race of mermaids, beautiful and mysterious. If they had looked deeper into the [originating] myth, they might have changed their minds — a Russalka was a predator that would use her charms to draw men down to the water, where they would be drowned and fed upon." (p.8)

An ill omen, no? On an underwater world, to make matters worse! But for a time, despite the odds stacked against them, the Russalkans thrive. That is until Earth attacks: a century after abandoning the colony entirely, an army arrives out of the blue, demanding the people's fealty. When they dare to disagree, the Terrans promptly wage war. In a matter of minutes, they devastate all they can of the planet, but finding themselves ill-equipped for prolonged underwater assault, Earth's forces eventually retreat... broken, if not nearly beaten.

From here, the Russalkans live in perpetual fear — and into this climate comes our heroine Katya Kuriakova, an aspiring navigator with admittedly little interest in her homeworld's history. For better or worse, that will change when - in the middle of her first official mission - she becomes involved with public enemy number one, Havilland Kane:

"He was a ruthless pirate, a murderer who had saved her life. He was probably a Terran, a Grubber, one of the filth who had killed her father and thousands more, yet he had also saved the Novgorod and everybody aboard her. Katya didn't know what to think. She couldn't bring herself to hate him, but she certainly couldn't like him either. That only left her the option of indifference, and Kane was a hard man to be indifferent about." (p.88)

Like many books of its particular ilk, Katya's World lives and dies on the basis of the relationship between Kane and our plucky young orphan. But wait till you hear this: they don't even kiss! Howard simply isn't about such an easy out. Instead, Katya and her chance companion are at one another's throats throughout, smartly arguing ideologies and debating what they should do with the leftover megaweapon they find on the ocean floor. Yet when a still greater threat arises - from within as opposed to outwith their world - they demonstrate themselves adult enough to put aside their differences.

Call me an easy mark, but I fell for Katya and Kane incredibly quickly. The latter is an immediately engaging antagonist, with secrets, clearly, and though Howard's characterisation of Katya is at times a touch discordant - one moment she's brave and pragmatic, the next she's "just a stupid little girl [with] no idea what she was doing" (p.149) - overall I came to care a great deal about her, especially in light of all that she's lost... not to mention all she loses over the course of this surprisingly merciless coming of age tale.

Half the fun of Katya's World, however, is in one's discovery of it; of its aquatic marvels and unearthly terrors equally. To wit, I wish the author had parceled out the heavy wedge of information he dumps whole-hog in the prologue. Other than this, Howard equips himself tremendously well, such that the first volume of The Russalkan Chronicles towers above most contemporary attempts to invoke dystopia.

The climax, finally, is fantastic. It may boil down to "one long round of jumping out of frying pans into successively larger fires," (p.324) yet the last act's successive set-pieces unfold so spectacularly that they're a joy to behold, albeit in one's imagination. Even then, Howard's prose is so pure that at this stage I don't even need to see the movie — and if Hollywood doesn't come a-calling shortly, filmmakers are missing a trick.

But you know what? For this, I'd line up on opening night anyway.

Romance aficionados need not apply, but all other fans of fun are likely to find lots to love about Jonathan L. Howard's new novel. Imagine The Hunt for Red October meets Retribution Falls. Rich in the character department and packed full of underwater wonders from prow to stern, Katya's World is exactly as enjoyable as all that. When the chance to return to this marvellous maritime planet arises, consider this critic suited and booted!

...

This review was originally published, in a slightly altered form, on Tor.com.

***

Katya's World
by Jonathan L. Howard

UK & US Publication: November 2012, Strange Chemistry

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Book Review: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard

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"Johannes Cabal has never pretended to be a hero of any kind. There is, after all, little heroic about robbing graves, stealing occult volumes, and being on nodding terms with demons. His purpose, however, is noble. His researches are all directed to raising the dead. For such a prize, some sacrifices are necessary. One such sacrifice was his own soul, but he now sees that was a mistake – it's not just that he needs it for his research to have validity, but now he realises he needs it to be himself. Unfortunately, his soul now rests within the festering bureaucracy of Hell. Satan may be cruel and capricious but, most dangerously, he is bored. It is Cabal's unhappy lot to provide him with amusement.

"In short, a wager: in return for his own soul, Cabal must gather one hundred others – in one year.

"One year to beat the Devil at his own game. And isn't that perhaps just a little heroic?"

***

When a book begins with a visit to Hell which outs the ghastly gates as anticipated by a painstakingly organised bureaucracy boasting a tree's worth of paperwork per person and three year-long wait for entry, you know you're in for an untraditional experience. In short order, Johannes Cabal, necromancer extraordinaire, breaches the red tape seeking an audience with Satan - and by the hair on my chinny chin-chin, he gets one. The pair struck a bargain years ago, you see, whereby our reanimating anti-hero sold his soul for a taste of forbidden fruit, but Cabal has since had time to reconsider the deal. So he's come to Hell to renegotiate the terms of his contract with Satan. Easier said than does, one imagines...

Eventually, however, Satan acquiesces. But he has his conditions - of course he does. A new contract is drawn up, stipulating that Cabal will recover his immortal soul when and only when he collects, in the space of a single year, the signatures of a hundred individuals; his soul for a hundred others, in short. To help him wrangle together so many souls, Satan gives Cabal command of a travelling carnival of the damned and a viscous ball of blood. The necromancer is then summarily ejected from the premises, with nothing to do but get his show on the road.

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer is Jonathan L. Howard's debut novel, but hardly his first time at the helm of such a creative endeavour. Howard has been puttering away behind the scenes of the video game industry for decades, as a programmer, a designer, and latterly a script writer. He's perhaps best known for his work on the Broken Sword series: adventures games a la The Secret of Monkey Island mode mostly concerned with Templar conspiracies. Now I'm a fan of the Broken Sword franchise, but not such a die-hard as to assert it's either the smartest adventure game around or the funniest. Nevertheless, on the basis of Howard's involvement with the first three installments of that series, I came to Johannes Cabal the Necromancer expecting a rollicking good time full of wit and absurdity.

Particularly on that latter count, Johannes Cabal's first outing - soon to be superseded, I understand, by his time as a detective - delivers in abundance. Cabal's excursion to a pocket quantum universe stands out, alongside his time in a haunted train station that bleeds depression into the atmosphere, and a chase around the carnival that culminates in an encounter with Layla the Latex Lady. There are moments of absolute madness throughout Johannes Cabal the Necromancer - the highlights of the whole affair - where the weird meets the wonderful and the fallout is appropriately baffling.

Sadly, absurdity does not always equal fun, and there are as many misses in Howard's debut as hits. Humour is a very personal thing, of course - you can't expect everyone to crack up at the same jokes - but after a strong start, you get the distinct sense that the comic aspect of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer has been put on the back-burner to be replaced by episodic encounters that bear little to no relevance on the narrative's driving force, which is to say the collection of a hundred souls by hook or by crook. I'd go so far as to say many of the chapters of this novel would be better set as short stories. They're pleasant diversions, one and all, but as part of a larger tapestry they do little to enrich the experience entire.

Let's face it, though: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer has few pretensions to intricate narrative. Above all else, it's a romp. As such, it's a success, albeit not quite so hilarious a one as I had hoped. Cabal is a brilliantly love-him-or-hate-him guide on a whistle-stop tour of the underworld, an anti-hero of the highest order whose acerbic wit makes some truly stomach-churning subjects tolerable. Howard, meanwhile, seems to have found his calling in genre fiction. Fun but ultimately rather forgettable, not everything about Johannes Cabal the Necromancer works, but when something does, it works on a level that surpasses many of the functional encounters in the video games Howard cut his literary teeth on. Darkly whimsical and wonderfully absurd, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer makes for a good start to a series that could well be great. If the reveal on the last page of this first book is anything to go by, in fact - an emotional surprise that gives depth and context to all that's come before - the best truly is yet to come.

Here's hoping.

***

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

by Jonathan L. Howard

February 2010, Headline

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