Today I’m bringing you a short review from the backlist: Taran Hunt’s The Immortality Thief, first published in October 2022 by Solaris. It’s the first book of “The Kystrom Chronicles” series; the second volume of that series, The Unkillable Princess, is slated for publication in early 2025.
Sean Wren is a talented linguist and treasure smuggler, eking out a living as one of the few survivors of a colony destroyed by The Ministers: enigmatic, immortal aliens that have taken political control over most of humanity. Standing alone against them is The Republic, a government that considers Sean and his colleagues as criminals. Capturing Sean and his childhood friend, agents of The Republic force them (using a Suicide-Squadesque bomb-in-your-head method of motivation) to take part in a special covert, off-the-records mission to salvage data from an millennia-old abandoned ship in orbit of a dying star on the edge of known space.
As the only speaker of a long-dead language, Sean’s abilities are essential to the mission. Arriving at the derelict station, the team discovers they are not alone. The Republic has failed to mention a previous team was sent to the ship. The Ministers converge upon it, knowing the dangerous scientific knowledge the data on this long-lost ship contains. And the corridors of the ship are stalked by monsters and ghosts of a long forgotten past.
My original plan was to review this novel soon after its release for Strange Horizons, then in late 2023 to coincide with the novel’s release in softcover. But each time I sat down to write a review, I found it difficult to organize my thoughts or decide if I really enjoyed the book, or was a bit let down by it. Even now, I’m still trying to decide.
On the one hand, its short chapters and fast-paced action make for rapid and entertaining reading through a relatively long novel. But on the other hand, that entertaining plot does feel repetitive, needlessly drawn out in action thrills at the expense of probing deeper into sociopolitical themes and their link to Sean’s traumatic past. The novel is well written as pleasurable genre fun, but as I considered it beneath that exterior, experiential layer, the more it felt like a literary equivalent of empty calories. And there’s, I think, the crux of whether a reader might adore the novel or dislike it.
As part of Strange Horizons‘ 2022 in Review, reviewer Eric Primm selected The Immortality Thief as a notable book among several that seemed “to fly under a lot of radars,” describing it:
“… [a] science-fiction horror that surprised and delighted. After coercion from the government, Sean Wren explores an abandoned ship that has been lost to time. Racing against him are the Ministers, aliens that rule over half of humanity with an iron fist. It’s fast-paced, tense, and excellent… [It] would make an excellent video game.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Primm here. This reads like a video game, from its space opera trope-filled premise, to the execution of its pacing, to the vibes of its complex protagonist: part damaged, part hopeful, part snarky. Hunt very effectively mixes tones of horror, humor, and adventure into the novel, using backstory as foundations of literary sincerity and gravitas – almost like a game might insert those same elements through cut scenes interspersed throughout the action game-play.
As speculative fiction, the one element of The Immortality Thief I most appreciated was the visual (color based) form of communication used by the Ministers. Reading how Sean used his linguistic and talents for logic to forge communication with the aliens, and slowly build a partnership of trust with one of them, stands out as the most memorable aspect of the novel for me. Those character interactions might allow the reader to figure out the ‘plot twist’ aspect of the novel a bit earlier than its full reveal in the novel, but don’t necessarily lessen its impact.
As I write this I’m starting to conclude that I love all the pieces of The Immortality Thief, but they don’t add together into something that I have equal enthusiasm for. It includes a lot of elements, straddling the border of popcorn entertainment versus complex thematic depth. Succeeding in general breadth, it pulled back from any depth in any single component in favor of doubling down on keeping things broad.
