Nova Byzantium

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The polar ice has melted. The planet's stored methane and C02 are outgassing in vast oxygen-depriving burps. Civilization is limited to a small region around Istanbul/Constantinople and a Muslim space colony. Transnistria is a major military power.

Welcome to the 22d century.

This is a brilliantly inventive, well-written book. Author Matthew Rivett gives us a view of the world that seems to be - actually, is - on the verge of going lights out for human civilization and, perhaps, humanity itself. Sometime in the past, the world suffered the Post-Industrial Shock that made the Earth an ecological disaster zone. Rivett spends no time on this; all we get is the phrase “Post-Industrial Shock” and a world where people occasionally wear rebreather hoods because the oxygen content has become depleted by a “dead zone” moving in like a cold front.

The main character is Uri Vitko, who previously was an officer in Alkonost, Transnistria's mercenary company. We follow him from India to Diego Garcia to the Muslim Orbital Colony to Constantinople to the Rhenish delta, to, ultimately, Jan Mayen, a small island in the arctic. We observe Rivett's richly imagined world where most of humanity has devolved to superstition and some of it is holding on to pre-twentieth century standards and a tiny slice still has 21st century technology with a smattering of 21st century cybertech and medical technology. We also follow as side story involving Lt. Sava, who knew Uri in his Alkonost days but is following his own story arc.

I loved the settings of the book. I spent a delightful time on the internet looking up “Transnistria” and learning that it is a breakaway region of Moldova, a ribbon of territory on the other side of the Dniestr river, that actually is effectively autonomous today. Likewise, I broke out some maps of the Caspian Sea to identify the locations of the barbarous “Caspi” warriors in the book. This was a satisfying change in setting from most science fiction stories.

I also love the fact that this story wrapped itself up as a self-contained. At 80% of the way through the book, I wasn't sure that I wasn't going to find that I had been swindled by another trilogy baited with the first book. Nonetheless, although there are definitely more places for Uri to go in this world, this book had the necessary closure for the mysteries that we were presented along the way.

I have two minor nits. First, the format of the book was confusing to begin with, as the chapters explicitly showed that sequence were out of order, with flashbacks and at least two parallel story arcs. I didn't put it together until I was satisfactorily surprised, but, suffice it to say, the format has a very good reason.

The other nit is that the technology seems anachronistic. This is supposed to be 150 years in the future, but the Alkonist are using Hind helicopters and Mi-24s? Of course, that may be an indication of when the Post-Industrial Shock occurred, effectively freezing technology, perhaps.

Before I go, I want to laud Mr. Rivett's writing. He is a terrific prose stylist with an impressive vocabulary. Here is a taste of his writing:

“The sundogs were greener than usual. More methane in the atmosphere, the gas pumped up the phantom suns' refraction intensity. As dusk settled in, haze filled the valley and obscured the stratospheric halos. Uri looked up and saw the flicker of the orbital caliphate. Like the pocked-gray Moon, it was a permanent fixture in the night's sky. Uri accepted humanity's presence in the celestial, almost without question, even though the sheikhdom remained a tantalizing mystery.
“There . . . ” Uri nudged Sava, then pointed. “Do you see it?”
“See what?”
Like an oil bead on a horsehair, a pinprick of reflected sunlight moved up through the southern mesosphere. Both watched as it shimmered like a gemstone, twinkling with a rainbow of color.
“It's the elevator,” Uri explained.”

Great exposition with style.

Likewise, I noted the following words to look up because I didn't know them, and I have a first rate vocabulary - aigulles, Nizari, caliginous, klobuk, guillemots, and phansigar. You don't have to look them up, but if you do, they open up worlds of thought. Likewise, he used arabesque, puerile and vertiginous as only a lover of language and someone confident of his love would.

Wonderful.

I enjoyed this story and recommend that you buy it and read and get this author to write a second novel.