This is the third book in T. Kingfisher's "Sworn Soldier" sequence, a series of novellas narrated by Alex Easton, a nonbinary (sort of) retired soldier from a Ruritanian country in the late nineteenth century. Like the first two, it is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novella.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher |
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Published: 2025 Acquired: May 2026 Read: July 2026 |
As is often the case with series that end up being Hugo finalists repeatedly, I enjoyed the first one a lot, but am a little skeptical about the fact that it keeps being nominated. The second one was nowhere near as good as the first. There are two factors here. One is similar to what affected the Murderbot novellas, in my estimation, is that part of what made the first book engaging was the voice of the narrator, but obviously what is novel in book one will not be novel anymore in later installments. I like Alex Easton a lot, but is their voice original in book three the way it was in book one? Of course, that doesn't make the book less good but it does perhaps make it less award-worthy.
The other reason I liked book two less is because it used its science fictional premise less interestingly. Book one was surely not hard sf, but it did take the idea that someone might be possessed by fungus with a certain level of seriousness, thinking through the premise in a way I didn't recall ever seeing before, and I enjoyed that aspect of it a lot. Book two, on the other hand, had what seemed to me to be an explanation that didn't rise beyond the level of "magic." Which was fine, but not what drew me to the series to begin with.
Book three, I am happy to say, is more like book one in that regard than book two. Though, again, this is surely not hard sf, Kingfisher has thought through a common sf&f idea and done her best to justify it, and I appreciated that a lot. Unfortunately, this isn't done as smoothly as in book one; we get a big chunk of exposition to make it all clear. But, I guess, the big chunk of exposition is a hard sf staple! Anyone, it's fun, T. Kingfisher always is... though I do wish she would go back to doing coming-of-age stuff, I find her more interesting in that mode than in horror.
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