In the Courts of the Crimson Kings

S.M. Stirling continues his Lords of Creation series with In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. This novel is only a true sequel to The Sky People (the first book in the series) by virtue of cameo appearances by characters from the first novel and universal consistency. However, don’t let that dissuade you.

Stirling’s approach is both brilliant and unique–he has our world history current until the late 1950′s and early 1960′s, when our first interplanetary probes began to land on neighboring worlds. Rather than finding Venus to be a cast-off of acid, carbon dioxide and rock, it is a jungle world teeming with life that has is Terran in origin…including humans. Mars, on the other hand, is a cold, desert world that in many ways is more advanced that Earth itself. Mars also has a dominant humanoid species that has diverged from Homo sapiens over the past 40,000 years.

The Sky People was set on Venus;  In the Courts of the Crimson Kings is set on (you guessed it) Mars. A young American archeologist and his handler are sent into the deep desert of Mars to search for a lost city that may contain an artifact that is both valuable to the current Martian society and to humanity as a whole. The story has a little bit of an Raiders of the Lost Ark feel to it, but Stirling handles the world building by giving the reader tantalizing glimpses into the history of Mars while the expedition is proceeding to its destination.

The plot is complicated by the fact that the female, native mercenary hired to guide the expedition is a secret heir to the Martian emperor. Opponents of the Emperor wish his heir dead. After an amazing discovery within the lost city and with the help of a couple of humans from the “Wet World,” the mercenary guide sets out to claim what is hers by rights.

If you’ve read any of Stirling’s other works, you’ll know that he excels at dystopias. The Domination, Dies the Fire, and to some extent Island in the Sea of Time depict gritty realities that describe the condition of humanity under complete tyrrany or after a massive collapse of society. These books are a departure from that. Stirling makes the attempt to capture the awe and wonder of golden age science fiction by turning the clock back to a time when Mars and Venus might have been capable of supporting life. Stirling manages this admirably. In fact, he makes me recall those long nights as a teenager when I would devour Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, and Burroughs when I should have been sleeping.

If you’re on the fence about purchasing the books, there are some chapters available on S.M. Stirling’s Web site. I’m not going to direct link the sample chapters without permission, but feel free to visit Mr. Stirling’s Web site and look for the Lords of Creation section about halfway down the page.