James Nicoll Reviews

Aliette de Bodard’s 2024 Navigational Entanglements is an upcoming (unless you’re reading this after July 2024) stand-alone science fantasy novel.

The endlessly bickering navigator clans provide fast, safe, reliable superluminal travel via the Hollows. They also manage extraordinary crises related to the Hollows. In rare cases, the clans cooperate to deal with significant challenges.

Despite being very junior, and in some cases discredited, a quartet of navigators — Hạc Cúc of the Snake Clan, Việt Nhi of the Rooster Clan, Lành of the Ox Clan, and Bảo Duy of the Rat Clan — are seconded to imperial envoy Ly Châu to deal with a pressing crisis.

But first! Exposition about space monsters.

The Hollows are inhabited. Some inhabitants, such as the tanglers, are predatory. Navigator services include avoiding voracious tanglers when possible, and fending them off when necessary. Navigators are also supposed to prevent tanglers from following starships into regular space. Rat navigator Phan Văn Ðăng An erred. Now a tangler is on the loose.

Navigators (and the Dogs, their less skilled imperial counterparts) have special powers and special senses. Regular people do not. A normal person cannot see a tangler, cannot avoid its tendrils, and might not understand what was killing them. A Rat having unleashed a tangler, it falls to the four to assist the envoy in tracking down the tangler and disposing of it.

Clans see each other as rivals. Cooperation will not come easy to Hạc Cúc, Việt Nhi, Lành, and Bảo Duy. Imperial envoy Ly Châu does her best to foster team spirit. The envoy is so consistently unpleasant that even the bitterest rivals can join forces in loathing Ly Châu.

Ly Châu is found dead. Poisoned; it’s murder. The four junior Navigators are the prime suspects. They may be innocent, but they would make handy scapegoats.

In the meantime, even without the envoy, the tangler needs to be found and dispatched. Detective work is sufficient to find the tangler. To Hạc Cúc, Việt Nhi, Lành, and Bảo Duy’s collective alarm, the tangler is much larger than they expected. Success may be beyond their means, even in the unlikely event the four can work together. If they fail, the death toll could be immense.

In fact, failure may be the goal, the reason four expendable juniors were assigned.

~oOo~

It’s clear the Hollow has its own ecosystems and equally clear that’s not what this book is about. Nevertheless, if the author ever wants write a Voyage of the Beagle in the Hollows. I would read it.

The books features an enemy-to-lover subplot. I miss the good old days when people who absolutely loathed each other could cooperate on prying Hitler out of his bunker without forgetting how much they disliked each other. Other people’s mileage may vary. In fact, I know it does because I often encounter this particular plot trope.

Many SF novels imagine settings in which FTL is dependent on people with very special powers. In many such settings, the special people can join special organizations for folks just like them. What seems unusual here is that there is more than one organization/guild/club and that the groups quarrel. Factionalism seems quite plausible. Am I not remembering other such settings? You can tell me in comments.

Navigational Entanglements will get filed under oligarchies in my end of month report. As is so often the case with de Bodard oligarchies, featuring a particular mode of government is not the same as advocating it. The narrative explores several failure modes common to oligarchies¹.

De Bodard skillfully entices the reader into caring about the awkward puppies making up the central quartet. I always look forward to the next de Bodard. This novel was no disappointment.

Navigational Entanglements is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

I didn’t find Navigational Entanglements at Apple Books. It seems unlikely that Apple doesn’t actually sell Navigational Entanglements. Putting together the bookseller links is my least-favourite part of reviewing. If a bookseller can’t be bothered to offer functional search options, fuck ​‘em. There are lots of alternatives.

1: Certain anti-federalist readers may be alarmed to discover that in this case, that as unpleasant as the envoy is, the central government has legitimate reason to be concerned about the groups that control something vital to galactic commerce.

I know, I know, this sort of thing is the first step down the slippery slope towards speed limits and mandatory seat-belts.