THE INFINITE STATE

In the midst of a fantasy trilogy about a quasi-Roman empire (Steel Gods, 2026), Swan takes a break to launch an SF series about a quasi-Roman empire.

The autocratic and patriarchal Decurion Empire, ruled by Pater Aeternus, values fertility and obedience, enforcing order via constant surveillance in an obvious nod to 1984—the author even references the famous line about a boot stamping on a human face. Katherine Fuller, the wife of a powerful Party member, is therefore left in a precarious position after her tank-grown baby and her husband die within a day of each other under suspicious circumstances. What she does have, at least, is money, and a growing sense that there must be an alternative to the life she’s living. She therefore takes a substantial chunk of her newly inherited wealth and uses it to buy a planet, where she intends to explore an unusual form of government called democracy. Meanwhile, Julian Yashego, a successful hypersled racer from outside the Empire, is lured by a fat paycheck into leading the Empire’s premiere racing team. He soon discovers he’s a pawn in a deadly conflict between rival government officials, one determined for Julian to win at all costs, the other bent upon his failure. Also trapped in the same conflict is disgraced, burnt-out investigator Cyprian Reis, who’s being pressured by one side into closing the case of a murdered engineer from Julian’s racing team and by the other into keeping it open. Are all these incidents signs that cracks are beginning to form in the previously unassailable Empire, or are they just blips before a brutal crackdown? This political thriller—in which everyone is predictably keeping secrets either to gain power or to preserve themselves and the people they love—manages to provide some interesting shocks and twists. Swan’s recent fiction directly engages our current political climate; this novel’s attempt to construct a plausible defeat of a Big Brother–analog government is both interesting and hopeful.

An intriguing, if not subtle, new iteration of the author’s concerns.