(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia)
One of the reasons that franchises like Star Wars have done so well is that they tap into an inherent need we all have for life to feel epic and adventurous.
To be fair, it very rarely is with commuting, bill paying and other day-to-day detritus of living not leaving a whole of time or opportunity to save someone, the world or the galaxy, so we rely on science fiction in particular to give us a sense of the kind of reality-pushing expansiveness of which we don’t ordinarily get a lot.
One author who has clearly ingested the diversionary lessons of Star Wars and space operas as a whole, is Michael Moreci whose Black Star Renegades series – which began with the superlatively good Black Star Renegades in 2018 – takes on a gloriously good romp throughout a galaxy very much in need of heroes willing to give their all to its salvation.
In this take on humanity out amongst the stars, the galaxy is increasingly falling under the control of the brutally autocratic Praxis Empire, a regime led by the darkly evil Ga Halle who will stop at nothing to ensure that her home planet, once the target of similarly greedy would-be empire builders, never again lives in fear of its culture or freedom being taken from it.
Instead, Ga Halle is taking it from a host of other planetary systems, enforcing her rule with some terrifyingly big weapons and a near-maniacal quest for the Rokura, a legendarily super-powerful, millennia-old weapon which may hold the key to whoever gets to sit at the top of the power pile in the galaxy.
‘Oh, hilarious,’ Cade said. ‘Real mature.’
‘Still can’t hear you,’ Mig toyed.
‘Then read my lips!” Cade yelled, and then he mouthed, very clearly, a pointed obscenity.
But then the noise stopped as the door was completely lowered.
‘All right, boys,’ Kira said. “Time to fly.’
In the second instalment of the series, We Are Mayhem (2019) which looks to sadly be the end of the things for moment anyway, she is being opposed, as she was in the first book, by a ragtag, very Luke, Leia and Han grouping of well-intentioned and near-unstoppable antiheroes who are determined that she won’t be the ultimate power to whom everyone must pay heed.
Channelling a very similar small plucky band of rebels against a monolithic wall of clearly evil autocracy energy that gave the classic three original Star Wars so much drive and verve but with a far-from-derivative vibrancy all its own, Black Star Renegades and We Are Mayhem are a huge delight to read because they not only take the whole fighting back against injustice thing very much to heart but they do so with a lot of witty dialogue, fully-realised characters and a narrative that somehow both doesn’t let up and yet feel emotionally weighty and meaningfully intimate.
It is, in short, superbly well-plotted story aside, a ton of fun to read, giving you that reality-shifting sense of diversion we all need and crave and letting us feel, for however long it takes to read its just over 350 well-used pages, that perhaps the world is as limited as it often feels and that maybe grand adventures to await us somewhere out there.
Whether that’s true or not isn’t the point, really (though it is a lovely side effect of reading space opera and one to be held close and treasure); what makes an impact is how real and human the people at the centre of We Are Mayhem‘s grand adventure seem to be.
Cade Sura is the heir apparent Paragon, the one who can wield the Rokura and in so doing save the galaxy but the one big fly in the messiah ointment here is that he is essentially the last one standing when everyone else, bar Ga Halle, fell over, usually quite dead, and while he has the weapon he also has a great big case of Impostor Syndrome.
Though he is trained in fearsomely effective martial arts and can easily defend himself, he struggles with the idea that he is supposedly the one and only thing standing between freedom and autocracy and that if he doesn’t get his collective sh*t together, that the galaxy will fall under a yoke it may centuries to remove, if that happens at all.
Lots of pressure then, and while brilliant military tactician, leader and pilot, Kira Sen (and perhaps his potential love interest though one, thankfully, more than able to save herself thank you very much), childhood friend and tech savant Mig, and wisecracking sentient drone 4-Qel are right there along with him, he’s still not sure he has what it takes to make a real difference to a galaxy very much in need of a leader who can best the evilness of Ga Halle.
But neither would happen now, not now. Praxis was coming for him– they’d always be coming for him.
Unless he finally did something about it.
Much of We Are Mayhem rather cleverly manages to balance Cade coming to grips with his destiny in ways that feel inspiringly good but also quite grounded, and a story that bursts from the page big and bold and ready to take on a task that on first appearance seems to big to handle but might actually be more doable than Cade especially thinks it is.
It’s a tricky thing keeping a story both epic and intimate in tension but Moreci manages it beautifully, giving us moments of real, broken rawness that never once take away from the heroic qualities of the key players and which in fact endear them even more as the sort of people we might want saving us if the galaxy we lived on was about to fall under autocratically vicious rule.
It’s hard not to relate to Cade and Kira in particular who together have everything a good resistance needs, especially if Cade will simply believe in himself a little more, and even though we might not have the opportunity to be the heroes of our own reality, they certainly do and watching them making the most of it, through forward and backward steps both, is a supreme delight.
We Are Mayhem is a worthy successor to Black Star Renegades, and while a third instalment would be most welcome, the second book ends in such a way that we get our happy-ever-after, or rather possible happy-ever-after, and we can walk away believing that good can triumph over evil and that while adventures don’t always end well, some do and we are lucky to have borne witness a very good one indeed.