Blue War

While crucial parts of this novel take place in Punktown, most of it takes place on the planet Sinan, in a completely different dimension than Oasis where Punktown is located.

It’s been about a year since the events of Deadstock, and its hero, private eye Jeremy Stake, is hired by his friend Henderson, still an officer in Earth’s Colonial Force and stationed on Sinan, to investigate two mysteries.

Henderson and Stake fought in the Blue War on Sinan ten years ago when the Colonial Forces sided with the breakaway nation of Jin Haa who successfully seceded from the more conservative Ha Jiin. Now Jin Haa’s capitol of Di Noon is filled with various industrialist and diplomats seeking to aid and profit from the new country. (And, yes, show more given these names and history and the blue jungles that cover most of Sinan, the planet and the Blue War are clearly inspired by Vietnam.)

Part of the economic aid is a project to build housing using self-replicating smart materials and located near the Neutral Zone between the two Sinanese countries. But something went wrong. The city, dubbed Bluetown, went rogue, replicating beyond set bounds, chewing up the native jungle, spewing out pools of acidic waste, and displacing the local farmers. It’s established fairly quickly that Bluetown is a close, though not perfect, replica of Punktown and its subsection even though that wasn’t the intent.

And within a Bluetown building, three human bodies are found, two dead and one an infant. It’s the mystery of Bluetown and to protect that child, Brian, from disappearing into the Colonial Forces bureaucracy to conceal some possible scandal, that Henderson hires Stake.

Almost all the novel is told from Stake’s viewpoint except the prologue which covers the discovery of those bodies by some Jin Haa troops patrolling the Neutral Zone and led by Captain Yengun who will become a major character in the book.

Naturally, as Henderson well knows, Stake is eager to return to Sinan where the love of his life, Thi Gonh, lives. A feared sniper in the Jin Haa forces, Stake fell in love with her when she was captured by his unit. He last saw her a year ago, in a bleary, half-conscious state when she secretly left her husband and traveled to Punktown to take out a couple of fellow Sinanse employed as muscle by a man who kidnapped Stake’s client.

A great deal of the novel is about is about Gonh and Stake’s on-and-off again relationship. He can’t understand her loyalty to a husband who doesn’t love her and is abusive. She won’t violate the dictates of her culture and is loyal to a husband who took her in after the war ended and she was no longer known as the Earth Killer but the Earth Lover. Stake’s and Gonh’s relationship is so well-known that Yengun says it’s become a well-known legend among the Jin Haa, a “romantic people”.

While there are some dark weird elements in the self-mutilation practiced by the local monks and the official reasons Colonial Forces got involved in the war, the Lovecraftian elements of Deadstock are almost totally missing from this story which is much more straight science fiction.

There is intrigue aplenty as Stake discovers the origin of Bluetown back in Punktown, a linkage that will involve the egotistical and sinister businessman Argos. Murders will follow. The industrialist in charge of the Bluetown project fears that he will be made the scapegoat for Bluetown’s failure and darkly hints that a venereal disease ravaging Sinan may have its origin in a Colonial Force plot. There’s also Abbott Hoo, in the pay of the Earth government, stirring up trouble.

Henderson’s superior, Gale, will be markedly hostile to Stake’s intervention because he has something to hide. Stake also carries on a brief, torrid affair with Gale’s girlfriend and science advisor Ami – a natural hermaphrodite.

Less integrated is a subplot involving a Sinanese black marketer, Don Tengu. Humorously, he’s a fan of yakuza and American gangster movies from Earth and has illegally mutilated a Sinanese child in the manner of the adult monks. While it thematically ties into Brian’s plight, I think that subplot could have been eliminated.

While I liked this novel and wouldn’t mind seeing more of Gonh and Stake, I didn’t like this as well as Deadstock. I missed the Lovecraftian elements of the latter and thought this novel was a bit less tightly plotted. Still, it’s a good science fiction novel with an interesting setting and characters with a satisfying mystery satisfyingly solved. show less