The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The Aeronaut’s Windlass is a steampunk flavored fantasy adventure novel set in a post-apocalyptic setting. Humans live in ancient constructed habitats referred to as Spires. Cities built out of implausibly strong material that the inhabitants have no way to replicate that tower into the sky and who communicate, trade and battle with each-other using airships powered by “aetheric” currents and magic crystals. The novel attempts to capture the gritty post-apocalyptic feel of population pressure and dangerous environment alongside epic three-dimensional naval battles and fast-paced swashbuckling action. But if fails to reconcile these pressures and ends up with a sprawling cast of viewpoint characters who split the focus of the fast paced action and a light bantering tone and description-light style that detracts from the weight of danger the setting feels like it should have.
Jim Butcher is most well-known for the Dresden Files urban fantasy novels where his sarcastic and hard-bitten gumshoe wizard gets entangled in high-powered magic showdowns with a variety of magical beings. I have read and enjoyed a few of them and I definitely respect Butcher’s ability to weave a variety of references into his genre mashup framework. I recognize that some of the flaws that I see in the Aeronaut’s Windlass are present with Dresden it works better because of the character viewpoint focus on Dresden and the genres he is working with are tighter. Combining noir detective story, modern setting and fantasy leads to a tighter paced novel with a more unified perspective and less need to explain background to the reader. The combination of swashbuckling adventure tale and a post-apocalyptic setting with a fantasy framework leads to a much more sprawling story that lacks the focus to tighten the story and highlights the lack of depth in the characters.
The biggest problem I had with this novel was the characters. They were wooden archetypes and worse than that almost all of the dialog and character interaction could be predicted by guessing “what is the most cheeky thing to say or do in this situation” and then repeat from the other actors in the scene back and forth until you get tired of it. Everyone was making smart comments and striving for wit in a brash and irresponsible way. It didn’t matter if it was the bratty heir to a high house, the shy awkward girl, or the honorable but disgraced airship captain. It was in your face levity all the time. The villains were comically bad or just doing their duty. There just isn’t much nuance and glaringly obvious mysteries are the norm. The one exception to the characters all feeling the same were the mages, who are unironically and unabashedly insane, but in a childish “what are insane people like” sort of way. It made them convenient deus ex machina machines to showcase their powers but unreliable to actually be applied as part of a plan to deal with any situation.
The plot of the novel is a bit of a mess, I’m guessing here but I think the overarching plot may be intended as a kind of move-countermove representation of a larger game between two (or more) actors plotting large schemes with superhuman foresight selecting and positioning pawns in the right place to conveniently thwart each other’s plans. This sounds like it could be an interesting structure or idea, but the capricious nature of the external hand and the lack of knowledge of the pawns involved makes it narratively frustrating. The story leads to an impressive plot cascade where each move is answered and the full force of the enemy plans is never fully realized because the bigger action has already been blocked by something the characters have done. As such it feels like there is never any danger and the reaction to the circumstance seems obvious though the characters do somehow manage to muddle it up to make the situation worse than if they hadn’t split up or if they had any capacity for long term tactical thinking.
I would like to say that the worldbuilding is nice: it does not rely on exposition and we aren’t treated to long passages about the histories of the different Spires or why the setting is the way it is. The hints throughout the story that suggest things about the world are well placed. I am intrigued by the suggestions that metal is corroded by contact with air unless sheathed in copper and am very interested to see what the world looks like on the surface which we never see in this story.
The other things I enjoyed about this novel is the portrayal of the sentient cats the live in the underbelly of the Spires. The interactions with the cats are done in a way that is both plausible, entertaining and humorous, I was particularly fond of the viewpoint character who was a cat who keeps one of the other viewpoint characters as a pet. The other thing that was done quite well and I wanted more of was the airship battles. It is obvious that Butcher spent a lot of time thinking about the mechanics of how aeronatical tactics would work, the consequences of the technologies he had invented and the application of a third dimension to standard naval ship-to-ship combat. These action scenes were well paced and thrilling, but they were few and far between.
I am a little conflicted overall about this novel. I enjoyed parts of it but there were significant flaws in the execution that really disappointed me. I keep going back and forth: but I think in the end it intrigued me enough that I will probably try to pick up the next book when it comes out. However I have a hard time recommending it based on the first book alone.