Book Review – Maelstrom
Books, Review | Professor Crazy | February 27, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Author: Taylor Anderson
Cover Artist: Studio Liddell
Publisher: Roc Books
Binding: Hardback
Publication Date: February 2009
Fans of Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen alternate history/alternate Earth trilogy set in 1942, the wait is over – Maelstrom is here! It is a satisfying, page-turning read that sees the final triumph of Lieutenant Commander (though he’s also referred to as Captain) Matthew Reddy and his crew, who manned the destroyer the USS Walker, and their Lemurian allies, over the ruthless feathered reptilian race known as the Griks. It’s the conclusion of the trilogy, but the Griks live on, albeit with greatly reduced forces, down to only 70 wooden ships. This makes the series open-ended, and leaves plenty of room for Anderson to write future novels set on this alternate Earth with the same characters, after the Grik have time to rebuild their strength – they’ve suffered a major blow, but they are relentless hunters who never truly give up their pursuit of prey.
For those of you who are perhaps unfamiliar with this series, it follows the travails and adventures of Reddy and his crew, beginning in the first book with their participation in the Asiatic Fleet battle against the Japanese destroyer, the Amagi. Though the Amagi was far larger and better armed than the USS Walker and the other American ships that participated in the battle, like Mahan, USS Pope, Exeter, and Encounter, fought bravely. A terrible squall (known as “The Squall”) carries USS Walker, Mahan, and Amagi (and, we find out in this installment, an American submarine) to an Earth that is similar in geography to our Earth.
The similarity in geography and the realism of the battle scenes is what lends the Destroyermen series its grounding in reality and makes the major characters more believable, as if they stepped out of the pages of a history book, and makes it easier to accept the alienness of their lemur-like allies, the ‘Cats (who call themselves the Mi-Anaaka, or the People). Though the main American allies look like 5′ to 6′ lemurs, their appearance is sort of a cross between cats and monkeys:
Most of his [Captain Reddy's] human destroyermen just called them ‘Cats now, depending on whether they were from the deck division (apes) or the engineering spaces (snipes). The Lemurians had become firm allies, and many were official inductees into the United States Navy. Like all Navy terms however – even slang – uniformity was important, so simply ‘Cats had gradually prevailed. There were still ‘Cat-apes, and ‘Cat-snipes, but that had nothing to do with race. It was occupational.
Chack-Sab-At and Nakja-Mur are two of the main Lemurian characters who serve on the Walker. They are shorter than most of the humans on board, but are broad and strong for their size, and have fought bravely in several battles against the Griks in the first two novels of the series.
The Griks are motivated by a natural instinct to hunt. They think of themselves as being Hunters, and everything alive is their Prey. They will even sometimes eat their own, and to become Prey for the Grik is a great dishonor. They’re divided into two classes, the Uul and the Hij. The Uul make up the majority of the Griks, and they struggle for survival from the Nest on. The Hij are the intellectuals, the artisans, the philosophers, and government employees. They still are relentless and bloodthirsty, but show that the Grik are capable of thinking about more than just the Hunt. They are the Grik’s ruling class. The Griks are described very fully in the first two books of the series, but here’s a brief description that is in Maelstrom:
It looked like a bipedal lizard, excepts it had short feathery fur instead of scales. Its snout and tail were shorter, proportionally, than one would have expected from a lizard, but the tightly spaced, razor-sharp teeth packing the short snout left the fiercest shark wanting.
Most of Maelstrom’s first half is about Captain Matt Reddy & crew trying to restore the battle-scarred Mahan and their attempts to convince Lemurians on other islands to join them against their common “ancient enemy,” the Grik. The Griks call the ‘Cats the Tree Folk, and are focusing on hunting them as their current Prey. The Tree Folk are one species that eluded their attempts to hunt them to extinction in the distant past, and the Griks hold a grudge against them for that reason. The Japanese aboard Amagi are ostensibly on the Grik’s side, but it’s not like they have much of a choice – it’s cooperate or become Prey themselves and get eaten.
There are sub-plots, though, like the efforts of one of Matt’s crew members, the Australian naturalist Courtney Bradford, to study the flora and fauna of the Earth they’ve found themselves in. These strange creatures, many which are dinosaur-like, make for many dramatic moments in the novel. The brontosarries, “pygmy versions of the dinosaurs they so closely resembled from the fossil record,” and the allosaurus-like Super Lizards are examples. Bradford’s knowledge of geography and geology are also crucial in the discovery of the best places to drill for the oil necessary to run Walker and Mahan. He’s an interesting, eccentric character who helps add some light-heartedness to the novel.
Other subplots involve rescuing humans and Lemurians from land held by the Griks; searching for the “iron fish,” which Captain Reddy believes must be a submarine; and the discovery of other humans who must have been transported there by other Squalls, who have colonized parts of the alternate Earth which Captain Reddy & crew have not been to yet. Some of these are dressed as Redcoats, which makes for a pretty cool mixing of different time periods.
Also, a ten-year-old girl, Becky who is more than she at first seems), her one-armed guardian, Sean O’Casey, and their companion, Lawrence – who looks (except in coloration) like a Grik but considers himself and his people to be a different species from the Griks – are important characters in Maelstrom. When the three are shipwrecked, they’re rescued by the S-19 submarine, which is trying to transport them back to their people before their plans get squashed when the sub is beached on Tarankan Island. Captain Reddy takes the remaining members of the S-19’s crew and the women and children who’d been aboard with him, but fears he’s taking them “from the frying pan into the fire,” as he’s just received word via radio that his worst fears have been confirmed, that while he’s away, the Griks are launching an attack on their base of Baalkpan. He gets the message from a somewhat unlikely source – an American POW aboard the Amagi, Captain Kaufman, who is being helped by Okada, a Japanese man who is horrified by the viscious cruelness of the Griks. He realizes that, ultimately, after their usefulness is over, the Griks will have no reason to keep the Japanese alive, and will make them Prey.
There is some repetition in Maelstrom from the first two books, which some readers might find too extensive. However, it’s necessary to have at least some recapping of what happened before Maelstrom both to refresh readers’ memories and to make this third installment stand on its own better for anyone who hasn’t read the first two novels. Maelstrom, because of this and the continuing high quality of Anderson’s research and writing, can be read and enjoyed without having read the first two books, though I recommend reading the entire series, and the previous novels first.
With its blending of historical fact, thrilling battle scenes, and science fiction, Maelstrom is a novel that anyone who loves reading both military and alternative history SF books will want to add to their libraries. The characters are complex, three-dimensional, and show growth over the course of the series, and Anderson, who is a gunmaker and forensic ballistic archaelogist and a member of the National Historical Honor Society and the United States Field Artillery Association, has done his research, and it shows.
Tags: Destroyermen, Historical Fiction, Maelstrom, ROC, Science Fiction, Taylor Anderson
Tweet This
Digg This
Save to delicious
Stumble it
RSS Feed
