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The Dark Ascent by Walter H. Hunt
01/05/2005 . Source: Joules Taylor 
pub: TOR. 416 page hardback. Price: $25.95 (US), $35.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-31116-X. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.tor.com
OK, since I can't better it as a synopsis, I'm going to quote myself from my review of the second book in the series, 'The Dark Path':
'Mankind has now colonised numerous planets and become the Solar Empire. In the course of their spread from the homeworld, humans encountered the zor, a winged species whose perception of reality is radically different from that of humanity. The two species indulge in a xenocidal war that destroys huge numbers of both races, until a human, Admiral Marais - the 'dark wing' of the first book, both angel of death and saviour of both species - betrayed his human heritage to end the war and save both humanity and the zora'e.'
It's now several hundred years later and zor and human live peacefully side by side, literally in some cases, where they share worlds. On Cicero, 'the biggest and most important border base of the Solar Empire', Commodore Jaqueline ('Jackie') Laperriere and her zor Sensitive executive officer, Commander Ch'k'te, are dropped into the middle of a crisis: two Imperial exploratory vessels have disappeared without trace or explanation and it's Jackie's job or, according to the zor, her destiny, to find out why...'
'The Dark Ascent' picks up from where 'The Dark Path' ends, with Jackie the (human) incarnation of the (zor) hero Qu'u now in possession of the legendary gyaryu. This looks like a sword, contains some of the hsi - spirit, essence, ki of everyone who has ever handled it. She is on her way to battle the insect-like aliens who are currently trying to invade the Solar Empire. Behind those aliens, however, is a larger and more powerful force using the various forces and races as gaming pieces.
The action swaps back and forth between Jackie, the Imperial Navy, the zor worlds and the invading aliens, who have mental abilities that include being able to take over the minds of the 'meat-creatures', as they call the mammalian sentients, forcing them to see exactly what they choose. With allies attacking each other and it proving impossible to trust anyone, as they may be one of the invaders, it will take considerable tenacity - and co-operation between species - to survive...
I'm irresistibly reminded of 'Babylon 5' and I think that's the problem: the story is just too derivative for my tastes. Well-written, well-paced, the descriptions of the battles tight and proficient, the characters believable (if not overly memorable for me) - but I've seen and read it all before.
The zora'e philosophies read like an odd mix of human religions with some Arthurian legend thrown in. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, of course. Anything too unfamiliar and esoteric will just leave the reader baffled and, after all, perhaps the mythic hero and their quest is a universal constant or at any rate a humanoid one. It's certainly a common enough theme in human fiction and religion. I'd have preferred something a little more alien here though...
But preferably not the continual use of zora'e words and terms. Yes, it's relatively easy to work them out from the context, but a glossary would have helped. The brief glossary of the honorifics used was OK, though after a while I stopped bothering to consider them, they aren't really essential to the story.
I could also have lived without the zor and saurian alien rashk names being so similar in construction, although it did make me wonder if the species evolved from a common ancestor. Both have six limbs, after all, even if the upper two in the zor have become wings... No, that's probably too fanciful, too forced, too close to evolution as it happened here...
I found the book oddly disappointing. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, except that there's nothing really original here. People who like space opera on an epic scale will thoroughly enjoy it. Those looking for something more thought-provoking would be better off reading elsewhere.
Joules Taylor
http://www.wordwrights.co.uk
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