Review: Tin Star & Stone In The Sky

Cover Summary:

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station. 

When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

Warning: spoilers.

If you’re wondering what Firefly would be like with aliens, or Rogue One with a somewhat lower death toll, this duology is for you.

It subverts several important tropes that science fiction writers have come to rely on. Firstly, there is an interplanetary government, but humans are not the glue holding it together. They’re one unimportant species among many. The language spoken between different species, Universal Galactic, is clearly not English and Tula Bane has real trouble understanding it until someone equips her with translation technology.

Since humanity isn’t the standard, this leads to some wonderful world building on the author’s part, sometimes by what she doesn’t write, as much as what she does write. Casually referring to a character as a “biped” implies volumes about the different kinds of alien bodies on that space station (Stone, p. 29). When one of them stabs Tula with the sting in his tongue, she assumes it’s poison, but it turns out to be something quite different (Star, p. 33).

Secondly, the aliens are not stereotyped. Each species has its own distinct culture and biology, but the characters are still individuals: for example, the Hort are cunning, ruthless, and offended by the sound of human voices, but one of them becomes Tula’s mentor. The Loor are formal and hierarchical, but one of them bends the rules to help Tula while another of them is corrupted by power. Humans themselves are stereotyped by the other species as primitive nomads, but all Tula wants is a home of her own.

Speaking of stereotypes, I was a little disappointed that in Tin Star, the only female character besides Tula was a caricature straight out of the movie Mean Girls. Why do we still assume that women who wear lots of makeup and tight clothes are always selfish, promiscuous or both? However, the author fixed that issue quite thoroughly in Stone in the Sky. Hendala, Ednette, Elizabeth and Myfanwy are all strong, complex female characters, and even mean girl Els is shown in a different light.

Thirdly, Tula herself is not the average heroine. She’s strong and vulnerable in interesting ways. On the one hand, she’s a consummate survivor: beaten and left for dead, the only one of her species, with no money, no possessions, and a shaky grasp on the language, she still talks herself out of trouble. She has excellent social and business skills: she can mimic alien body language, keep track of a complicated network of trades, bend the truth, and even kiss someone she dislikes if it gives her an advantage.

But while she’s an expert at connecting to people on a surface level, deeper connections are a problem for her. When it comes to romance and friendship, she’s as confused as any other teenage girl; arguably more so, since she has no human mentor to ask for advice. Her strongest relationship is with her enemy, Brother Blue, and that trips her up as well; it takes her a long time to learn that hate should not be the reason you get up in the morning. These flaws make her more relatable, as well as driving the plot forward; most of her actions are fueled either by revenge or loneliness.

The only weak point in the series for me was Tula’s relationship with Tournour. All the hard work seems to be on his side: he saves her life many times, walks a delicate tightrope between loyalty to her and his duty as Chief Constable, watches her fall in love with another man, helps them be together, and makes considerable efforts to understand how her alien mind works. What does she do for him in return except cause trouble? That being said, I liked the subtle ways he finds to show her he’s on her side, even when he’s locking her in the brig or frisking her for weapons.

The two of them remind me of Constable Odo and Major Kira from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Although it’s the Andorians who have antennae …

Okay, someone stop me, before I start making Trek references all through the night.

Needless to say, Tin Star and Stone in the Sky are highly recommended for all science fiction fans.