The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher

Book Review

Pauline Morgan

When an author produces a series of books featuring a popular set of characters that enchants the readers, they want more of the same. It makes it difficult for the author to move on and create new scenarios. There is a danger that the fans will be upset by losing their favourites, or not like the new series. An outcry from the readers after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes (because he was tired of writing about him) was so great that the publisher made Doyle bring him back. It still happens, but the sensible reader will happily try a new series, partly because they like the style and the imagination of the writer.

            Jim Butcher came to the notice of the reading public with his series of novels featuring Harry Dresden. The Aeronaut’s Windlass is the first of a new series set on a planet that has been settled for a number of centuries.

Most people live in the vast cinder spires. The implication is that they were there when humans arrived. The surface is particularly hostile, so transport between spires is by air. Like most things in the spires, the airships are powered by crystals which provide the lift. A windlass is a ship whose crystals only give it enough lift to allow it to go up and down the spire. Relations between the spires are often unfriendly, and as the novel opens, Spire Albion is on the verge of war with Spire Aurora.

            The early chapters introduce the main players before they link up. Gwendoline Lancaster is the daughter of the House that produces the crystals in a large vattery (they are grown). She is headstrong and determined to do her National Service against her mother’s wishes. As an only child, she could be exempted. Her cousin Benedict is ‘warriorborn’. His heritage is not completely human and, like others of his kind, he is in the Guard due to his exceptional strength and skills. Brigit is the last member of Tagwynn House. She works for her father who owns a meat vattery and, as she is used to humping around slabs of meat, she is physically strong. Her friend/companion is Rowl, son of the chief of the local tribe of cats. Brigit can speak cat, and cats can understand human speech.

            The other principal character is Francis Maddison Grimm, the privateer captain of a merchant airship, Predator. He was once a member of Albion’s Aetherial Navy but was accused of cowardice and dismissed. His ship has been damaged in a fight with an Auroran airship and the crystals that power it are severely damaged. It seems that the only future for Predator is as a windlass, carrying goods up and down the spire.

            Through his few remaining friends, he is offered an opportunity to refit the ship, if he carries out a clandestine mission, one only someone with a dodgy reputation could carry out, as it involves creeping around the ventilation shafts that keep the air in the spire fresh.

            Albion comes under attack by the forces of Spire Aurora, both by a fleet of airships and from within with enemies in the tunnels that have brought in creatures from the surface who are highly poisonous to humans.

            The world building is immaculate with not just a sense of history but of the kind of strangeness that a good novel should have whether you would class it as SF or fantasy. It has elements of the naval battles reminiscent of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books but with more jeopardy as falling overboard means a two-mile plunge to the surface, and enemy ships can come up from below or from above. Ethersilk, spun by spider-like creatures that live on the surface and are highly aggressive and poisonous, is a vital commodity. Used by the ships for protection and to give extra lift, it is also formed into elegant clothes which can act as a very flexible body armour, particularly as crystals woven into gauntlets are the equivalent of hand guns in this society.

One thing that will charm all readers is the cats. They are tribal, have their own rules, and are as arrogant and pushy as any we are familiar with.

The Aeronaut’s Windlass has all the ingredients expected from a Jim Butcher novel including excellent characterisation, plot twists and mayhem. An excellent start to the new series.