I first came across Richard Swan’s work with The Justice of Kings, an excellent grimy fantasy novel centred on a murder investigation. The whole of the Empire of the Wolf series is proof that Swan can write a great story, underpinned by complicated yet enthralling politics. The Infinite State shows he can do it in space, too.
With The Infinite State, Swan has given us an intriguing political thriller and some fascinating hard-science of terraforming and civilisation formation while topping it all off with a climactic battle scene reminiscent of The Return of the Jedi.
The Infinite State is the closest I’ve come, in written form, to capturing the thrill of watching the original Star Wars trilogy.
A New Rebellion
The Infinite State is a slow burner. It has three seemingly disparate threads that slowly weave together in the build up to the novel’s thrilling finale.
The backdrop to it all is Pater Aeturnus and The Decurian Empire. An all seeing, all powerful dictatorship whose secret police has tendrils everywhere on the planet.
Katherine is the wife of a company man. A man who is deep in the pockets of The Empire. When he dies mysteriously, she inherits vast wealth, which, after a chance encounter, she decides to use to create a brand new settlement on an off-world planet.
Julian is a hypersled racing pilot. The finest in the galaxy. He’s been brought to Leonis, capital planet of the Empire, to bring it triumphant glory in this galaxy-wide sport. Julian soon realises that his golden one-year contract is a cage. One he is very unlikely to escape from with his life.
Cyprian is a classic embittered detective who washes up with the wrong murder in his caseload. He’s been stung by the politics of Leonis before, and it’s hard to see how he’s not going to be chewed up and spat out once again.
Each of them is trying to survive, without realising that forces behind the scenes are pulling the strings. Or rather, they know that there are unseen forces pulling the strings, they just don’t realise quite how many layers of string pullers there are.
What a Tangled Web we Weave
The book is essentially about untangling that web of string pullers. The opening couple of hundred pages are slow but quietly absorbing. Katherine is coming to terms with her new precarious position, but is gradually learning the complex politics of the Decurian Empire and the wider galaxy beyond it. As she learns, we learn.
This exposition extends to how planets are colonised and societies created, including city building and terraforming. Parts of this section reminded me a little of Sim Earth from back in the day. There was something delightfully nerdy about it.
Julian and Cyprian’s sections add more punch. Julian’s with the visceral thrill of hypersled racing and death-threatening rivalry with the man he replaced, who is now racing for another team. The hypersled races also add another layer to that feeling that we’re Star Wars adjacent here. They’re hard to read about without thinking of podracing or, for that matter, the bright visuals of Speed Racer.
As Cyprian investigates his murder case, he finds himself inexorably drawn into a world of deceit and violence.
Both strands reveal more about the level of control that the Decurian Empire exerts, but also the large volume of infighting that goes on between departments as each of them try to protect their interests. We learn that life is cheap when everyone is jostling for favour.
The Decurian Empire is arguably a series of dystopian tropes. All powerful, sclerotic, riven with infighting. It’s terrifying, capable of extreme brutality, but hamstrung by the fact that nobody trusts anybody, and subordinates will happily tread on your face to rise to the top. No wonder Katherine wants to escape.
While there may be nothing new in the power that is The Empire, Swan makes it feel credible, ugly and threatening. It avoids the feeling of fakeness engendered by Panem in The Hunger Games.
Attack of the Clone[S]imian Defence Force
As well as letting me make another Star Wars reference, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that somewhere along the line, The Infinite State picks up a simian clone army. I’ll add nothing more, except to say this opens up another strand of excellence in the novel, adding depth to the action sequences as well as another ethical dimension to the book.
The end of The Infinite State is excellent. I was genuinely swept up in it, with a level of excitement that I usually only find at the cinema. It sounds a bit hyperbolic, but I really was transported back to my childhood and watching the original Star Wars trilogy, as things come to a head for Katherine, Julian and Cyprian.
I very much enjoyed Swan’s worldbuilding. It’s possible some might see the political elements as a little bit info-dumpy, but I found Swan’s rummaging around under the bonnet of various political systems lent legitimacy to the decisions taken in the book.
It’s also hard not to read about the hegemonic cult of personalities and not consider contemporary politics. It’s hard not to love a book that contains the line “You will have to protect the electorate from disinformation so that they do not voluntarily put a dangerous charlatan in the capitol.”
The Infinite State is the first book in a new series. There are plenty of unanswered questions at the end of the book, so don’t expect closure in this first volume. Much as Justice of Kings did when I first read it, The Infinite State has left me desperate for more. I’ll have to wait a while to find out what happens next, but I can at least console myself that Swan has another series, starting with Grave Empire, that I can read in the meantime.
If you would like to pick up a copy of The Infinite State, you can do so here.
If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews here. These days, I primarily blog at PotsandPlots, where you can find another version of this review.
I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.
