Review: The Fourth Consort

The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Edward Ashton writes fast-paced science fiction thrillers that tend to have a fair amount of psychological depth, and this book follows that pattern. We have what might be a bog-standard first contact story gone wrong, but then the author gets into themes of alien/human culture shock and a culture clash built around opposing concepts of honor and loyalty. It all serves to lift the story above what might have been cliches in another writer's hands.

Dalton Greaves is a bit similar to Ashton's breakout character, Mickey Barnes of Mickey 7, in that he is the designated "ground-pounder"--the muscle, in other words, protecting the two other crewmembers, one human, one alien, of the combination explorer/science vessel/first contact scout the Good Tidings. The Good Tidings is representing the Unity, an interstellar federation that is working to bring any sentient species it encounters into its fold. Unfortunately, the Unity has a rival, the Assembly, doing much the same thing (if with quite a bit more of almost religious fervor). On the newly discovered planet of the minarchs, the Unity and the Assembly clash, and Dalton is dragged into a mess of galactic and local politics.

Set in a near-future where representatives of the Unity have contacted Earth and take some specific people off-planet, signing them to contracts of exploration for a certain number of years in exchange for returning home very rich (if they survive) Dalton is a perfectly ordinary (if a bit unsettled and drifting) protagonist. He's very practical and pragmatic, and adapt himself to the increasingly weird situations he finds himself in. Just after contact is made with the minarchs, a ship of the Assembly arrives to try to steal the Unity's thunder. Boreau, the alien commanding the Good Tidings, attacks the Assembly warship, cripples and destroys it, and is himself vaporized, leaving behind Dalton Greaves, his crewmate Neera, and a "stickman," an alien warrior of the Assembly, seemingly abandoned on the planet. Dalton and the stickman, who later names himself Breaker, must band together to survive in a situation which escalates to scheming and murder. Dalton is pulled hither and thither between several conflicting sides, and must walk quite a tightrope to make it out alive.

Along the way, we explore the psychology and culture of both Breaker and the minarchs, and follow Dalton's sometimes deft, sometimes clumsy, and mostly desperate attempts to thread the needle. He is forced into becoming the titular "Fourth Consort" of a minarch queen, First-Among-Equals. Needless to say, he has no idea exactly what this entails, and gets ever more embroiled in court politics. Along the way, Breaker (who is a bit of a philosopher) has repeated discussions with Dalton to try to understand humans (Breaker calls humans "prey animals," and thinks Dalton does not have the slightest understanding of how a sapient apex predator--the minarchs--think, and he's right). The book's climax comes down to a fight to the death between Dalton and a minarch he names Scarface, and Dalton saves himself by hurling a spear through said minarch's throat.

(I think this is the first book I've ever read which asserts that what sets humans apart is not their warlike tendencies, or opposable thumbs, but their shoulder joints:

"You see that?" Stonebreaker said, and swung his shoulder around in an easy circle. "That is why we own this world, my friends. That is what we have that no other animal on this planet has. Your shoulder is the most complex large joint that evolution has ever produced, and it allows us to do something that no other creature we have yet encountered has figured out how to do: throw, with power and accuracy. When a lion decides to take down a wildebeest, she has to do it with teeth and claws, and she has to brave the horns. Do that enough times, and you're likely to wind up dead. Us, though? Ever since we figured out how an atlatl works, we've been able to kill at a distance. That means we can kill literally anything, from a rabbit to a mastodon, with minimal risk to ourselves. If you're looking for the one thing that sets us apart from everything else, well, that's it.")

This book doesn't give the aliens the depth and complexity of, say, an Adrian Tchaikovsky, and it's written in a lightweight, breezy style. Still, it has a plucky narrator and enough of a philosophical edge to hold the reader's interest.

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