Sly Mongoose - Tobias Buckell

Sly Mongoose (UK / US) is Tobias Buckell's third novel and is set in the same universe as Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. Pepper is back as one of the main characters, jumping out of an orbiting spaceship, into the atmosphere and into the action. It's a great opening set-piece and sets the tone for the rest of the novel: plenty of action.

The novel also contains an awesome enemy, zombies! Yes, an alien virus that infects humans and is spread by biting, called The Swarm. Pepper meet zombies, meet carnage. The interaction between The Swarm and Pepper is highly entertaining. Unfortunately the other parts of the novel didn't excite me as much.

The novel is focussed on the world Chilo, in which the population lives in floating cities, above the high pressure and hostile air. Some of the cities are second class Aztec descendants, the others are higher tech Aeolian who have mass consensus voting to decide what to do. There's some nice ideas here, but I don't feel that enough is made of them. The voting in particular feels under-developed, I wanted to explore more of that society. I think the problem is that I'm much more inclined to be interested in the high tech stuff, rather than the steampunky surface suits or clockwork flying monsters. If you like steampunk, akin to Crystal Rain, then you'll probably like all this.

The plot continues at quite a pace, there's plenty of action and a couple of twists. It's adventure Science Fiction. And I think that's my problem. I'm beggining to realise that the SF I really love is either the more questioning type, asking deeper searching questions or the emotionally resonant stories. And I've read quite a few of these this year (it's been a good year!). Sly Mongoose is neither of these, and is not supposed to be. So, it's a fine book, and if you liked Tobias's other novels then you will no doubt like this too, but for me it was missing that extra special kick.