We do love our rogues and scoundrels, and Captain Darian Frey certainly fits the bill – the skipper of the freighter the Ketty Jay, leader of a misfit crew, Frey is a small-time low-life with small-time ambitions. The world of Retribution Falls is one in which the landscape makes air travel the most important way of getting around, and with his clever twist on that perennial SF favourite of airships (making travel sound like a cross between space travel and  a naval voyage), Chris Wooding has conjured up an interesting and enjoyable adventure.

Although it’s set on a single planet, there are echoes of the much-mourned TV-series Firefly in Retribution Fall – in terms of the size of ship and its crew, their existence on the fringes of legality and the kind of scrapes they get in to, it feels similar, and that’s no bad thing. Frey’s crew are a diverse lot, most of  whom are harbouring dark secrets that hinder their willingness to open up to one another and work as a team: there’s the alcoholic surgeon who doesn’t trust himself to operate, a daemonist with a guilty secret and an undead navigator, among others.

It all kicks off with Darian Frey failing to follow that well-known dictum that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is – he accepts a contract to engage in piracy (fully intending to swindle his crew out of their payday), but it turns out that the Ketty Jay has been set up to take the fall for something far more serious than a mere piracy. What follows is an adventure that takes the crew far and wide – initially just fleeing for their lives, but later taking the bit between their teeth and working to unmask the conspiracy that could cost them their lives if they are apprehended by the authorities.

Retribution Falls is an enjoyable adventure – well-paced, effective and good fun. The satisfaction that the reader gets from seeing the crew of the Ketty Jay gradually coalesce in to an effective team (and Frey grow to value them) is considerable, and the way in which Wooding teases out the stories of the various crew members during the whole length of the book keeps things varied and interesting.  Anyone who likes to sympathise with rogues and shady characters, such as fans of Scott Lynch’s Locke Lamora, will surely enjoy the reprobates of Retribution Falls. I am certainly looking forward to their continuing adventures.

P.S. You can get a flavour of Wooding’s writing, and size up Captain Darian Frey, on the new blog The Logbook of the Ketty Jay.

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