Russ Allbery: Review: Challenges of the Deeps

Review: Challenges of the Deeps, by Ryk E. Spoor

Challenges of the Deeps is the third book in the throwback space
opera Arenaverse series. It is a direct sequel to
Spheres of Influence, but Spoor provides
a substantial recap of the previous volumes for those who did not read the
series in close succession (thank you!).

Ariane has stabilized humanity’s position in the Arena with yet another
improbable victory. (If this is a spoiler for previous volumes, so was
telling you the genre of the book.) Now is a good opportunity to fulfill
the promise humanity made to their ally Orphan: accompaniment on a journey
into the uncharted deeps of the Arena for reasons that Orphan refuses to
explain in advance. Her experienced crew provide multiple options to serve
as acting Leader of Humanity until she gets back. What can go wrong?

The conceit of this series is that as soon as a species achieves warp
drive technology, their ships are instead transported into the vast
extradimensional structure of the Arena where a godlike entity controls
the laws of nature and enforces a formal conflict resolution process that
looks alternatingly like a sporting event, a dueling code, and
technology-capped total war. Each inhabitable system in the real universe
seems to correspond to an Arena sphere, but the space between them is
breathable atmosphere filled with often-massive storms.

In other words, this is an airship adventure as written by E.E. “Doc”
Smith. Sort of. There is an adventure, and there are a lot of airships
(although they fight mostly like spaceships), but much of the action
involves tense mental and physical sparring with a previously unknown
Arena power with unclear motives.

My general experience with this series is that I find the Arena concept
fascinating and want to read more about it, Spoor finds his
much-less-original Hyperion Project in the backstory of the characters
more fascinating and wants to write about that, and we reach a sort of
indirect, grumbling (on my part) truce where I eagerly wait for more
revelations about the Arena and roll my eyes at the Hyperion stuff.
Talking about Hyperion in detail is probably a spoiler for at least the
first book, but I will say that it’s an excuse to embed versions of
literary characters into the story and works about as well as most such
excuses (not very). The characters in question are an E.E. “Doc” Smith
mash-up, a Monkey King mash-up, and a number of other characters that are
obviously references to something but for whom I lack enough hints to
place (which is frustrating).

Thankfully we get far less human politics and a decent amount of Arena
world-building in this installment. Hyperion plays a role, but mostly as
foreshadowing for the next volume and the cause of a surprising
interaction with Arena rules. One of the interesting wrinkles of this
series is that humanity have an odd edge against the other civilizations
in part because we’re borderline insane sociopaths from the perspective of
the established powers. That’s an old science fiction trope, but I prefer
it to the Campbell-style belief in inherent human superiority.

Old science fiction tropes are what you need to be in the mood for to
enjoy this series. This is an unapologetic and intentional throwback to
early pulp: individuals who can be trusted with the entire future of
humanity because they’re just that moral, super-science, psychic warfare,
and even coruscating beams that would make E.E. “Doc” Smith proud. It’s an
occasionally glorious but mostly silly pile of technobabble, but Spoor
takes advantage of the weird, constructed nature of the Arena to provide
more complex rules than competitive superlatives.

The trick is that while this is certainly science fiction pulp, it’s also
a sort of isekai novel.
There’s a lot of anime and manga influence just beneath the surface. I’m
not sure why it never occurred to me before reading this series that
melodramatic anime and old SF pulps have substantial aesthetic overlap,
but of course they do. I loved the Star Blazers translated anime
that I watched as a kid precisely because it had the sort of dramatic set
pieces that make the Lensman novels so much fun.

There is a bit too much Wu Kong in this book for me (although the
character is growing on me a little), and some of the maneuvering around
the mysterious new Arena actor drags on longer than was ideal, but the
climax is great stuff if you’re in the mood for dramatic pulp adventure.
The politics do not bear close examination and the writing is serviceable
at best, but something about this series is just fun. I liked this
book much better than Spheres of Influence, although I wish Spoor
would stop being so coy about the nature of the Arena and give us more
substantial revelations. I’m also now tempted to re-read Lensman, which is
probably a horrible idea. (Spoor leaves the sexism out of his modern
pulp.)

If you got through Spheres of Influence with your curiosity about
the Arena intact, consider this one when you’re in the mood for modern
pulp, although don’t expect any huge revelations. It’s not the
best-written book, but it sits squarely in the center of a genre and mood
that’s otherwise a bit hard to find.

Followed by the Kickstarter-funded Shadows of Hyperion, which sadly
looks like it’s going to concentrate on the Hyperion Project again. I will
probably pick that up… eventually.

Rating: 6 out of 10