I think a short confession is in order: Orbus is the first of Asher’s Spatterjay novels I have read. It is always an interesting experience diving into the middle of a long sequence of novels: you’re dropped into their established continuity and you have to swim or else drown in a sea of odd names, gimmicks, and underdeveloped characters. Luckily, Orbus is a lot more accessible and, frankly, a lot more readable than many of the fifth and sixth installments of the contemporary ‘genre’ epic. In brief then: Orbus is a spaceship captain sent with a pair of wisecracking war-drones to terminate the agents of a race of psychotic crabs (the Prador) who have infiltrated the demilitarised zone dividing their homeworlds from those of the AI-ruled humans, the Polity. However, they become involved in the hunt for a rogue Prador called Vrell, in whose fate it seems pretty much everyone has some kind of stake. Things heat up, things explode, battles are fought and some sort of outcome is reached – which is just as you would expect, this being Space Opera of the rather modern sort exemplified by, say Alastair Reynolds.

Indeed, this book benefits from a deep-seated straightforwardness of approach. It rattles smartly enough through events, letting the action do the talking even while you are carefully fed the usual dribs and drabs of exposition and backstory that makes it all, if not spring to life, then at least seem plausible and interesting. There is a lot of combat – in space and out of it – which is something Asher does well, and there are some pleasantly unexpected moments of excitement and suspense to add to the entertainment value. Whatever else might be said of it, Orbus is not a dull book.

That said, I would hesitate to call it a particularly deep book either. My main gripe, if anything, centres on the fact that for a protagonist, Orbus himself is overshadowed by the people surrounding him rather more than common sense might dictate. Asher’s attempts to give him some sort of tortured battle towards self-realisation over the course of the book are so completely irrelevant to the fireworks blasting planets into slag in the background that I barely noticed them. The remaining characters either come pre-built or are largely of no import. In fact, they’re usually so busy doing things of epic proportions that they never really take time out to be characters, at least in the sense of exhibiting actual emotional complexity.

This might sound like a deal-breaker but it isn’t. Orbus is fun, readable, and uncomplicated. It doesn’t really have its science on display, so there are very few obstacles in front of the reader who wants to coast pleasantly through the less fraught stretches of their own imaginations. But it doesn’t really carry much weight since, without much in the way of ‘hard’ sci-fi to look at it mostly becomes an entertaining read for committed fans of the genre. It’s no Consider Phlebas or Revelation Space, but by and large it doesn’t set itself up to compete with them. On its own terms, then, Orbus is a sort of success; just don’t expect too much.

Reviewed by Meirion Jordan

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