https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3184263.html

This was an intense tale of family secrets and ancient mysteries on Mars. Wasn't quite sure how the two narratives hung together, but I enjoyed the read. ( )

This is the third novella of the third quartet of NewCon Press novellas, although the fourth book I read of the set. Not, I hasten to add, for any particular reason. It is subtitled “A Winterstrike Story’, and I have no objection to subtitles but I would like to point out that they are not titles. So when a data entry form has a field called “title”, it means title, not title and subtitle, not title and, as I have seen, “[random award] winner”. People complain about Big Data, but it would be much less of a problem if we didn’t have Shit Data. But that’s a rant for another day. I have read Winterstrike, but not the other books in the series. Neither is necessary to understand the story of Phosphorus, which, to be honest, isn’t much of a story. It’s extremely strong on setting – and Williams’s Mars is a fascinating place – but the story doesn’t really go anywhere or do much. A young woman with some mysterious quality is adopted by her mysterious aunt, who takes her from Winterstrike, which is under attack by another city, to the dead city of Tharsis. Meanwhile, the sole survivor of the Hunt – although she is dead, but animated by one of the Hunt’s starships – an alien race that saw its mission in life as “culling” other races, leaves her homeworld of Phosphorus, and eventually ends up on Mars. An event which, it transpires, happened centuries before the other narrative, and the young woman is in some way connected. And, er, that’s it. Pretty much. An interesting idea that’s not at all explored. It reads like the start of a novel. Nice writing, nice world-building, but disappointing plot. ( )

Full review forthcoming - I adored the worldbuilding and the glimpses of different societies and aliens that we got in this, but the plot is a bit thin and I suspect it would benefit greatly from reading other books in Williams' Winterstrike world. It served very well to get me interested in picking up more by the author, though! ( )

I enjoyed this novella very much. Not having read Winterstrike, I can’t tell whether this is a prequel or a sequel, but it seems to be a stand-alone story.

The story is mainly set on Mars, but also has flash-back sections of the last of an alien race. The alien appears to be some kind of intelligent social insectoid who is a hunter - like soldiers in an ant heap. They appear to exist in a niche where they keep other intelligent species in ecological balance. One of these ‘prey’ species has managed to exterminate the Hunters.

Mars has a pulp feel to it; it’s not explicitly stated, but it seems that society is all female - some kind of genetic engineering has made males redundant, and they are largely extinct. A young female moves in with her aunt after one of her mothers enters a rehab facility and the other remarries. They live in the city of Winterstrike, which is at war with another city, and is under bombardment. The aunt takes her niece to the abandoned city of Tharsis.

In Tharsis, the two plot lines converge; the niece turns out to be not really human.

Recommended, and I will be looking out for a deal on Winterstrike.