The blurb:
Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.
With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume – and value – of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.
It has always been Marca Nbaro’s dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.
All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she’s made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life – and scandals – behind isn’t so easy.
She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . .
The review:
A month or so ago, The Inn hosted a conversation with Miles Cameron and John Gwynne about weapons in fiction. After hearing Miles talk about his upcoming book, Artifact Space… Yeah, I had to have it.
I mean… swordfights in space? Give it to me.
So what is Artifact Space about? Well, to simplify it down a lot, Marca Nbaro is a woman who escapes a state-run finishing school known as the “Orphanage” to become a midshipper on the Greatship Athens, a merchant vessel. She fakes her way aboard the Athens with forged papers, hoping to leave everything about her Orphanage life behind. And who can blame her? The Dominus who ran the orphanage was a real piece of work, and a lot of the trauma from this unfortunate backstory informs Nbaro’s characterisation and development as the story unfolds.
I thought Nbaro was an interesting character, and I was certainly invested in her story, but there was also a sense of… distance… to her. Which may just be a characteristic of Cameron’s writing style, or may have been a deliberate authorial choice to indicate her attempts to hold everyone else at arm’s reach. She’s the kind of character that doesn’t want to become too invested in her new life and new friends for fear that they’ll be taken away from her. Which is… y’know, a valid concern given her circumstances. This is a trope that never fails to pull at my heartstrings, and I appreciated how it was navigated here. All the fears, all the internal contradictions, they all got time to breathe.
There was also a character subplot involving some sexual aversion on Nbaro’s part, stemming from an incident in her past. I had initially wondered if Nbaro might be asexual, but on reading to the end, I’m not sure that if would be an accurate description. On the subject of representation, there was some non-binary rep in the side character cast, with the androgyne gender identity being universally recognised in-world.
There was a surprising amount of world-building crammed into Artifact Space. Cameron didn’t just jump us forward a few hundred years and keep the same modern-day social structures and political systems in place. He plays with these things, and this made for some interesting reading. The importance of galactic trade has led the world to evolve into a kind of mercantile-socialist system, which I can only imagine was partly inspired by historic mercantile republics such as Venice or Genoa.
Something else I really enjoyed was how Cameron tied all these elements together. There was some real character moments where Nbaro worried that her past will catch up with her, or that she’d never be able to move on from it. The fact that she was on board illegally meant that there was an underlying sense of tension whenever she performed notably in her role or formed (very charming) friendships with her shipmates. This tension is only heightened when her past does catch up with her, and when the greatships come under an unprecedented, violent attack.
I found this to be a bit of a “slow” read, and a lot of that was probably due to the volume of information that was thrown my way. Some of this I found interesting: how the society is structured, how issues of class and merit are handled… that sort of thing. But there were also quite a few lengthy explanations of how things such as space travel or spaceships functioned, and admittedly I found those to feel slightly dry and (after a certain point) repetitive. Your mileage may vary here, though, as I have a very low tolerance for fictional tech explanations due to my day job. So while I personally felt that the pacing was a little wobbly due to the inclusion of these scenes, this may be a very subjective experience.
I enjoyed Artifact Space, and I would hazard a guess that any readers who enjoy historical fiction (or any existing Miles Cameron fans!) might find this to their liking. Despite the sci-fi setting, I feel like the “feeling” of this book is much closer to historical fiction. Artifact Space is detail-orientated, deliberate, methodical, and it doesn’t shy away from a sword fight. Those who have a very strong preference for more exuberant stories or for more “colourful”, charismatic main characters might find that this is a little dry. But for everyone else… there’s a lot here to like.
If you want a tense, human, sci-fi story about a woman carving out a life for herself in a world she was told she’d never belong in… this is the book for you.
We received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Gollancz for the review copy!
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