THE PHANTOM CHIMERA

In Queen’s SF novel, a team of humans able to derive superpowers from the spirits of the dead answer a distress call to enter a riotous universe of alien beings.

In this work, the author continues his space-opera series launched in Phantom Pact: The Bearer’s Burden (2018). The setting is a universe in which the human race—at least the segment confined to the Kingdom of Chalice—has forgotten its origins. Only one working spaceship remains accessible to them: the Exilia, one of the technological remnants of the mysterious “Ancients” that also include AI computers, weapons, and androids. These humans have made a discovery: Certain people (“Bearers”) can make “pacts” and merge with the “phantoms” (spirits) of the dead to carry out their unfinished business until such time as the phantoms can peacefully pass into the “Transcent” afterlife. Such bonding endows the Bearers with comic-book superhero powers, such as the ability to take on the strength of different forms of matter (e.g., diamond, tungsten, or steel). Many Bearers have brought bad names upon the breed by abusing this gift, but renowned Bearer Cade Elegy is ethical and heroic. When his wife and children were killed, he made pacts with their phantoms and became addicted to a Bearer drug to dull the agony. Cade and his allies were instrumental in a long-odds victory against the sinister alien Wraiths; now, a year later, one of the Ancients’ dormant sentient AI minds, Eos, reactivates to warn of an approaching danger. Are the Wraiths on the attack again? Cade, spunky princess Ashlyn Winshire, spaceship captain Hale Clendon, Eos, and other heroes unite to take the Exilia off-planet in search of answers. A “Guardians” corps pursues them, as Cade is actually a “Seraphim,” a genetically engineered offshoot of the Bearers whose powers may pose a threat to the cosmos itself. Answering a distress call places the characters at the mercy of a vast automated prison ship, a race of fearsome beasts called “Familiars” who threaten the “balance” of everything, a powerful business enterprise with its own military backing, and, of course, additional Wraiths.

Queen is a video game creator, and one imagines the maddeningly complex rules governing the Bearer-phantom arrangement detailed in shelves full of technical manuals, suggesting basement sessions of Dungeons & Dragons & Ray-Guns & Robots & Starships & Physics & Bigger Starships With Bigger Ray-Guns. As the narrative careens through what The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would call “excitement, adventure and really wild things” (as in The Hitchhiker’s Guide, there is some comedy, though not as extensive), a certain fatigue does set in, with one fresh hell, new enigma, and narrow escape after another. (“We know so little of this universe, and we have done nothing but stumble our way from one situation to the next. That we are still alive is a miracle.”) The story thus far concludes on a cliffhanger. Queen compellingly tackles heady themes of mortality, redemption, and the meaning of life; it may be significant that the Wraiths, in their true form, look a little like how one might imagine fallen angels. Readers should be prepared for some daunting narrative navigation.

A grand and ever-so-intricate space opera that’s sometimes overburdened by its complicated plot.