Winston Churchill said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” I like to think he was wrong, but on a day when large parts of England and Wales go to the polls, including the voters of London picking a new Mayor, it’s interesting to think about what democracy means. For our politicians, the consequences of failure are not too grim: a second career as an after-dinner speaker, reality TV ‘star’ (well OK, that’s grim) or company director. For the politicians in Jaine Fenn’s first speculative fiction novel, Principles of Angels, the consequences of failure are rather more terminal.

The floating artificial disc of Khesh City – rather like a miniature version of the Discworld… on crack. Topside, tourists flock to sample the drugs, sex, and freedom that are on offer; beneath the disc, in the Undertow, we encounter a grimy world where food and water are at a premium (don’t ask what they eat), and gangs predominate, sending whores and thieves up top to fleece the tourists in any way they can. The Angels who also live there are the assassins of the City: chosen by the mysterious Minister, they kill politicians who have been selected in a public vote to pay the price for their failures. No-one messes with the Angels or their loved ones. Unfortunately for Taro, someone has made an exception and his line mother, the Angel Malia, is killed by a hired assassin, leaving Taro without protection and plunging him in to the centre of a conspiracy involving forces beyond his comprehension.

The resulting adventure has plenty of twists and turns and introduces us to some intriguing and enjoyable characters, not all of them human. The setting for the story is well realised and it is clear that Fenn has put a lot of work in to planning out her universe, with plenty of hints about other places and races worthy of future exploration. Indeed, on her blog she says:

Playing labyrinthine role-playing games has given me a taste for telling individual characters’ tales as part of a larger story, and most of my fiction is set in a coherent seven-thousand-year future history. During this time mankind falls and rises again—with help—leaving human-occupied space as an apparently stable area of several hundred semi-autonomous systems, no two alike. Unfortunately humanity’s dark past won’t stay dead and the future holds threats worse than any faced so far.

This debut novel shows plenty of evidence of this approach to universe-building, and although Principles of Angels functioned well as a stand-alone book, it did also give me a strong desire to read the next of the (provisionally titled) Hidden Empire series. Fenn’s work is reminiscent of early Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds and other singers of the space opera – but she also has a deft touch for characterisation that is more in keeping with successful fantasy authors. I look forward to reading more of her work, and I wish her considerable success.

Now whatever you do, if you can, please go and vote (if it helps, imagine that your favourite candidate will be assassinated by a state-sanctioned killer if you don’t!).

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