SF Signal: REVIEW: Debatable Space by Philip Palmer

REVIEW: Debatable Space by Philip Palmer

REVIEW SUMMARY: Despite some flaws, I'm anxious to see where this series is headed.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A band of space pirates kidnaps the daughter of the Evil Emperor.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Cool science fictional ideas; well-written action scenes; a welcome variety of offbeat characters; reads fast.
CONS: The construction of the book shows through; extensive character background felt like padding; misplaced comedy at the beginning.
BOTTOM LINE: A good first novel and a promising start to a new series.

Debatable Space is an ambitious debut novel from Philip Palmer -- ambitious because it tries to be several things at once: space opera, comedy, pirate adventure, action-novel. It's not always successful, but it's definitely a promising start.

The straightforward plot concerns a band of space pirates (lead by the confident man-with-a-backup-plan Captain Flanagan) who kidnap a member of the Cheo's family. "Cheo" is short for the mostly-offstage Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation that rules the galaxy, which is not so much a corporation as it is an evil Empire. The aim of the kidnapping appears at first to be untold riches, but the plan (like the plot) is a bit deeper than that.

This sounds like a typical playground for space opera and this book definitely aims to be that. If it doesn't entirely succeed it's because it rarely intermingles the story elements together. Here's an action scene; now here's an infodump; now here's character background; etc. You can almost see the story scaffolding on which the words hang. Early on, the characters spout snarky dialogue that ultimately works against the tone of the coinciding events. Or put another way; the seriousness of the space opera is belittled by the overt comedy, and the smack-talking pirates work against the drama. (It should be noted that I've rarely found a successful mixture of comedy and science fiction beyond Douglas Adams.) But the comedy layer (at least the unwelcome overt kind) thankfully fades pretty quickly. The story worked better from then onwards.

Flanagan's crew consists of a welcome variety of offbeat characters: there's Alby, a sentient flame being; a three-eyed man/beast Loper named Harry; Jamie, a 120-year man who early on opted to halt the aging process and so appears like a 10 year-old boy (with a 120 year-old libido); Alliea, a tough slave who escaped her imprisonment; Kalen, the feline engineer; and Brandon, an astrophysicist. Not much attention is given to them, though, because this story is mainly about Lena, the Cheo's daughter.

Here, I had another problem. We are given inordinate amounts of Lena's background that, while interesting in its own context, feels like filler because it does nothing to advance the book's plot. These character background marathons - designed as entries in Lena's thought diary - read more like author notes and could have easily been trimmed down to make a leaner story and get the desired characterization. Even with Lena's extended lifespan, the variety of her experiences (scientist; crime-fighting secret government agent; concert pianist; novelist; teacher; victim of a plague which causes skin to fall off; secret vigilante fighting pharmaceutical companies; and on and on) just seems like overkill.

But the science fictional elements of the story (the reason I read science fiction) were fun indeed: In the book, space travel is not very common because people do it vicariously through Doppleganger Robots. This is enabled through quantum-based satellite technology to instantly communicate across vast distances. The area of space known as "Debatable space" surrounds a cordoned-off area of space that houses deadly, nano-sized bugs. Like the well-written action scenes that had me wanting more, these are the space opera tropes that made the book more enjoyable.

The worst that could be said about Debatable Space is that it's a first novel. Despite my longwinded griping above ('tis easier to complain than compliment) I never wanted to stop reading the book and ultimately enjoyed it. Palmer's prose (gimmicky typography notwithstanding) is engaging and reads like lightning. I ate this up - nearly 500 mass-market paperback pages - in four days; a rarity for this reader. I'm interested enough in the universe and pleased enough with the writing style that I wouldn't mind seeing what else Palmer has in store for us in this universe.