Control Review: The Solar War
I, Dalton Lewis, have read 50 books in the last five years. That’s an atrocious amount, way too low for a novelist. During those five years, though, I had a breakdown, moved back in with my parents, stopped driving, failed to get a job, and turned forty. Considering that it’s been a rough five years of mental and physical illness, fifty books isn’t too terrible. I rate it as an accomplishment. In addition to playing video games, writing novels that get bad reviews, and watching football, I read book fifty. It was The Solar War by John French.
The Solar War is the first book in an eight book series in which the forces of the Chaos Space Marines try to take Terra — Earth — from the Space Marines of the Imperium — the loyal soldiers of the Emperor. It follows the 54-book (!) Horus Heresy book series in which both sides fight huge and terrible battles over the known galaxies. In this book the Chaos Marine spaceships, thousands of them, show up in Earth’s solar system ready to attack and begin to strip away the solar system’s defenses, one layer at a time. Fighting for the chaos marines includes Abaddon, Horus’s loyal chief lieutenant, who is leading the attacking ships, and Ahriman, a leading sorcerer, who has a spiritual task that needs doing.
Trying to stop them includes Sigismund of the Imperial Fists and his Primarch, the legendary Rogal Dorn, the defender of Earth and its forces; and also Jubal Khan with a White Scars fleet, and his Primarch, the legendary Jaghatai Khan. The story also follows a prisoner with essential information who tries to get from far out in the solar system to Earth with some other refugees on a civilian ship.
The war stretches out over the novel’s 400 pages, with attacks, counter-attacks, surprises, and a lot of blown-up ships, space stations, and even asteroids. Thousands of ships fight in titanic battles scattered throughout our solar system. All in all the battles are tense, brutal, and well told.
I think that showing some refugees and normal people trying to live through this cataclysmic battle really helped raise the stakes. We understood a bit better what these people were fighting for. Mersadie, a prisoner with a mission, had a story which hit home — she wanted so desperately to get to Earth to help provide essential information about Horus to Rogal Dorn, and forces on both sides desperately wanted to stop her, thinking her an agent for the other side.
There are two battles going on — one a physical battle and the other a spiritual battle. In the spiritual battle an old man, the Emperor, advises a young man, Malcador, his agent, how to be a good person. He tries to defend a cave in a caveman setting from a young man, Horus, who wants to kill him. This spiritual fight is supposed to be as important as the physical one.
Food runs out, and water spoils, and the people fighting the war grow desperate as the solar war continues. The dreaded Night Lords begin to hunt down the ships fleeing the conflict with soldiers on board. Fighting goes block by block on places like Pluto and space stations near the main planets.
Countless people die in this story. It’s a violent military SF space opera, with dashing warriors, desperate battles, cunning strategies, clever surprises, and even a few women in key roles. The Siege of Terra book is clever and devious — as are its warriors.
I compare that to my life — my biggest battles are my daily workout and trying to lose weight. My other biggest battle is to build a writing career from the ground up, with blog entries, fan fiction, and novels. I’m starting work on a new sci-fi novel with a lot of fighting in it. I hope to write something worthy of this kind of pulp sci-fi classic.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
