It's not what you think.
Sarah Hoyt's No Man's Land: The Chronicles of Lost Elly encompasses three volumes: Volume One is available now; Volume Two releases on Sept. 23; and Volume Three on Oct. 7.
The cover says it's space opera, but then it reads for a bit like fantasy.
It starts with a space battle, but it's not military SF.
So what is it?
No Man's Land is a story — I started to say "the story," except I know there will be more coming — of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, informally known as "Skip," the scion of nobility in a star empire with a Heinlein-esque aristocracy and an absolute rejection of slavery, surrounded by opposing tyrannies that think slavery is just nifty.
It's a departure from Sarah's previous work. Sarah says she's had this idea in mind since she read The Left Hand Of Darkness at 14, but it's taken this long to gel.
In an alternate timeline, and with another writer, it could have turned into (yet) another "Horatio Hornblower in Space" action yarn. Gordon Dickson would have written a Dorsai novel around this idea, and Skip would have been a Dorsai superman.
However, Skip is traumatized by his first battle experience and doesn't want to be Horatio Hornblower, and he in no way feels like Superman. He sees himself as a failure and a disappointment, and he has lost the one person on whom he truly depended. He tries to run away into wild living, until he hits bottom.
Having hit bottom, Skip is pulling himself back up when he finds himself thrown into a situation that challenges everything he knows and believes. He doesn't believe in magic; he believes in science. But he's found himself surrounded by what sure seems like magic.
To be fair, Skip's presence, his very existence, challenges everything the people around him know and believe. They do believe in magic; they believe in their history and the magic that shaped it. They have little regard or use for science, but then they find out about the science in their own past.
Hoyt puts them all in a world built with a richness that makes me think of what Tolkien might have written if he had been a science fiction writer, or Ursula LeGuin might have written if LeGuin hadn't been an anthropologist in pectore. Then she gives Skip and those around him a long story, and lets them deal with a plot that surprises at every turn and ends in a way that, no joke, made me a little misty.
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In many ways, it's really a Bildungsroman: a story of a boy becoming a man and learning what it means to be his own man. Skip was forced into a role by society and his family — a military family that names their heir "Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus" is making no secret of their expectations — and that role fits Skip like Groucho's pajamas fit that elephant. The role of junior diplomat seems a better fit, but then the junior diplomat finds himself responsible for the fates of his new friends, their struggles, and his own society.
Since publishing No Man's Land, Sarah has discovered AI-generated music, and darned if it isn't pretty good.
No Man's Land is in three volumes for practical reasons — it's one big story, and I recommend it.
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