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A review by essemmarr
The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change by S.M. Stirling
2.0
The Change. A great Deus Ex Apocalyptica for a now quite long-running series of books. A long-running series of books that, for the middle run, I struggled with continuing to read.
I liked the first few books very much; going through the actual horrors of The Change and watching tiny bands of devastated survivors struggle to establish new societies and fight off their enemies was very enjoyable.
Then, the Ren Faire nonsense started becoming increasingly prominent and I enjoyed it less and less. This is a personal thing; I just generally don't dig fantasy, magic, any of that, and would have happily enjoyed reading about the neo-medieval + understanding germ theory and having bicycles world that was being established. But magic swords and seers and demons all started becoming prominent.
Stirling lost me for a while, though once a year or so I would begrudgingly zip through the latest release in the series, reading the occasional paragraph aloud to my wife until I could actually hear her eyes roll and she started Googling divorce lawyers...
All of that said, I'm enjoying this... what I'll refer to as Third Generation series a bit more. We're a few generations into The Change. Honestly, Game of Thrones (TV show, not the turgid doorstop of a book series) has opened me open a little to fantasy in general, though The Change could stand to borrow a little more of the latter's much more believable grittiness and shittiness of humanity rather than the pretty stark black and white world it presents. So I'm more accepting of the premise that magic-y stuff exists, though lightly outside of the actual ruler of Montival and their sword and the bad guys (formerly CUT, now without even a name throughout an entire goddamned book because we haven't even really MET them yet but hey, gotta churn one of these out a year... do I fear some creeping Turtledove-ism? Maybe). And while I still find the lack of environmental impact of the complete collapse of the industrial world (aside from literally one toss-off sentence about how Pacific fish might not be super-safe to eat near the shores of dead Seattle, c'mon now) nor much mention of just how much shit would still be lying around even 50 years after The Change... I dunno. Stirling is a pretty compelling world builder, and now the series is taking place in entirely his own creation instead of a mix of our time and his new one, and it generally works.
I like the expanded scope he's setting up this new series (or three) to take place in; the chapter featuring "King Birmo", a VERY thinly-veiled future version of contemporary author John Birmingham (who is just outstanding himself, if you haven't read him or somehow don't follow him on Twitter) and describing what's going on in post-Change Australia is delightful, even if it sets us up for a whopping zero bit of followup (though I fully expect we're not done with Australia yet, just might be another book or two before we get there).
Likewise, the extended sections covering Queen Reiko's past and how Japan got through The Change are thoroughly enjoyable as well.
That said, this book is all setup for what I imagine will be four-five books before we're all said and done. Every generation must have its Quest, in the post-Change world, and they are not tales told quickly.
The addition of non-American (Montival-an?) elements goes a long way towards squashing the incessant dopey medieval English/Scottish/Irish-isms that were about all we got in the middle books of the series; now I can at least pretty much glaze over the excessive descriptions of what a McClintock is wearing or what feast a Mackenzie is eating or yaaaaaaaawn... this is Stirling's big weakness, and he indulges the SHIT out of it in this book, as he has in every preceding one as well. You either like it or you don't; I don't love it but can get past it.
Stirling's love of descriptive writing serves him better with the military side of things, not that there's much of that in this entry.
The key thing to know about The Golden Princess, as a book, is this: It's ALL setup for future books.
And that's fine, but know that going in. If you're expecting a typical self-contained three-arc genre action novel, you'll be disappointed; there's no payoff at all, not even really a cliffhanger because no action really occurs; we're being introduced to a wide new set of characters in great detail, and the nature of what they'll have to accomplish is being woven into detail, but THAT'S IT in this particular book. You're committing to reading a bunch more over the next few years so if that kind of commitment is off-putting, don't get started).
That said, Stirling's batting average over his entire career, for me, is quite high, and he's a stellar world-builder who can really give the reader a sense of the world being acted in, so I don't mind that an entire not-short novel was spent here on that sort of thing at the expense of anything actually happening. I think this new Quest for this new generation is going to be entertaining, and it sounds like a good chunk of the early action is going to take us through post-Change Los Angeles and Southern California, which should be great fun. And Birmo's Australia looms in the background, waiting to be looped into the story, and I'm sure that will be as crazily fun as Birmo's own writing is in THIS timeline.
So, if you've already been enjoying The Change series, you'll probably enjoy this. If you're daunted by how big this series is already, you can safely start here because it's basically a whole new story at this point, and there's more than enough background on how we got here presented in this volume to get you up to speed.
I just hope the payoff is worth the investment, because I can already tell this series is going to weigh in a quite a few thousand pages when it's all said and done.
I liked the first few books very much; going through the actual horrors of The Change and watching tiny bands of devastated survivors struggle to establish new societies and fight off their enemies was very enjoyable.
Then, the Ren Faire nonsense started becoming increasingly prominent and I enjoyed it less and less. This is a personal thing; I just generally don't dig fantasy, magic, any of that, and would have happily enjoyed reading about the neo-medieval + understanding germ theory and having bicycles world that was being established. But magic swords and seers and demons all started becoming prominent.
Stirling lost me for a while, though once a year or so I would begrudgingly zip through the latest release in the series, reading the occasional paragraph aloud to my wife until I could actually hear her eyes roll and she started Googling divorce lawyers...
All of that said, I'm enjoying this... what I'll refer to as Third Generation series a bit more. We're a few generations into The Change. Honestly, Game of Thrones (TV show, not the turgid doorstop of a book series) has opened me open a little to fantasy in general, though The Change could stand to borrow a little more of the latter's much more believable grittiness and shittiness of humanity rather than the pretty stark black and white world it presents. So I'm more accepting of the premise that magic-y stuff exists, though lightly outside of the actual ruler of Montival and their sword and the bad guys (formerly CUT, now without even a name throughout an entire goddamned book because we haven't even really MET them yet but hey, gotta churn one of these out a year... do I fear some creeping Turtledove-ism? Maybe). And while I still find the lack of environmental impact of the complete collapse of the industrial world (aside from literally one toss-off sentence about how Pacific fish might not be super-safe to eat near the shores of dead Seattle, c'mon now) nor much mention of just how much shit would still be lying around even 50 years after The Change... I dunno. Stirling is a pretty compelling world builder, and now the series is taking place in entirely his own creation instead of a mix of our time and his new one, and it generally works.
I like the expanded scope he's setting up this new series (or three) to take place in; the chapter featuring "King Birmo", a VERY thinly-veiled future version of contemporary author John Birmingham (who is just outstanding himself, if you haven't read him or somehow don't follow him on Twitter) and describing what's going on in post-Change Australia is delightful, even if it sets us up for a whopping zero bit of followup (though I fully expect we're not done with Australia yet, just might be another book or two before we get there).
Likewise, the extended sections covering Queen Reiko's past and how Japan got through The Change are thoroughly enjoyable as well.
That said, this book is all setup for what I imagine will be four-five books before we're all said and done. Every generation must have its Quest, in the post-Change world, and they are not tales told quickly.
The addition of non-American (Montival-an?) elements goes a long way towards squashing the incessant dopey medieval English/Scottish/Irish-isms that were about all we got in the middle books of the series; now I can at least pretty much glaze over the excessive descriptions of what a McClintock is wearing or what feast a Mackenzie is eating or yaaaaaaaawn... this is Stirling's big weakness, and he indulges the SHIT out of it in this book, as he has in every preceding one as well. You either like it or you don't; I don't love it but can get past it.
Stirling's love of descriptive writing serves him better with the military side of things, not that there's much of that in this entry.
The key thing to know about The Golden Princess, as a book, is this: It's ALL setup for future books.
And that's fine, but know that going in. If you're expecting a typical self-contained three-arc genre action novel, you'll be disappointed; there's no payoff at all, not even really a cliffhanger because no action really occurs; we're being introduced to a wide new set of characters in great detail, and the nature of what they'll have to accomplish is being woven into detail, but THAT'S IT in this particular book. You're committing to reading a bunch more over the next few years so if that kind of commitment is off-putting, don't get started).
That said, Stirling's batting average over his entire career, for me, is quite high, and he's a stellar world-builder who can really give the reader a sense of the world being acted in, so I don't mind that an entire not-short novel was spent here on that sort of thing at the expense of anything actually happening. I think this new Quest for this new generation is going to be entertaining, and it sounds like a good chunk of the early action is going to take us through post-Change Los Angeles and Southern California, which should be great fun. And Birmo's Australia looms in the background, waiting to be looped into the story, and I'm sure that will be as crazily fun as Birmo's own writing is in THIS timeline.
So, if you've already been enjoying The Change series, you'll probably enjoy this. If you're daunted by how big this series is already, you can safely start here because it's basically a whole new story at this point, and there's more than enough background on how we got here presented in this volume to get you up to speed.
I just hope the payoff is worth the investment, because I can already tell this series is going to weigh in a quite a few thousand pages when it's all said and done.