EVERY SKY A GRAVE

Just as the human race has achieved a stable society that stretches from planet to planet, an elite government agency discovers the seeds of a growing revolution in the opening volume of Posey’s new series.

Long ago, humankind discovered that the key to conquering the universe was language. The Deep Language controls all of reality, and those who can speak it have immense power. An organization called the Ascendance is in charge of the agents who speak the Deep Language, but it works more like a religious group, with the Paragon at the top and her group of agents, called Advocates, following her lead. Elyth, one such Advocate, is tasked with destroying planets where the Deep Language has been compromised, which really means it’s her job to put down uprisings against the Ascendance. Using the Deep Language is akin to magic, in that Elyth knows the correct phrase to say in order to fast-track a planet’s natural death. The Paragon, pleased with Elyth’s work, sends her on a crucial mission to follow a strange speech pattern that shouldn’t exist, and at the end of the trail, Elyth finds a man who shouldn’t exist, either. The notion of language as the fabric of the universe is pretty clever and works well here because Posey goes to great lengths to keep the Deep Language scenes straightforward and easy to follow. But what does that matter when the stakes are so murky? It’s clear that the Ascendance is corrupt, but it’s unclear how, unclear why some people are revolting, unclear why any of this matters other than passing mentions of intergalactic travel and vague menace.

A series opener with excellent worldbuilding but not enough of anything else.