Caller of Lightning by Peter J Wacks and Eytan Kollin
Cover art by Dave Seeley
Cover design by Carol Russo Design
Published by Baen Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
I still remember when Sarah Hoyt mentioned on her blog that she had a new novel coming out, and that it was set in an alternate colonial America with magic. I had loved Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series and Greg Keyes' Age of Unreason series, so I could tell I was looking at something that was apt to hit all the same happy buttons those 'verses had. So I immediately went on our library's website and was happy to discover that yes, they already had it on order and I could put a copy on hold.
When I finally got my hands on Uncharted, I made myself read it slowly because I knew I'd devour it in a sitting otherwise -- and there was no knowing how long it would be before the next installment in the series would come out. And while it was a very different story from either Card's or Keyes' works, it did hit all the happy buttons I was hoping for. I was fascinated by the idea of a magic battle both destroying Halley's Comet and severing the New World from the Old -- so of course I wanted to find out how this alternate Lewis and Clark Expedition would turn out. Would they be able to find their way through one after another peril that was being thrown at them by the mysterious evil somewhere in the Wild West? And if they did, would they be able to find a way to restore communication with England by crossing the Pacific Ocean?
And then I reached the end and the stunning revelation of just how deeply the Sundering had changed the world. In fact, it reminded me of Jerome Bixby's classic short story "It's a GOOD Life." Of course I wanted to find out what would happen next, so I started avidly watching the Baen website for any hint of the next volume. As soon as I got the news that it would be titled Council of Fire, I started watching the library catalog for it, so I could get into the hold queue for it.
When I finally got my hands on it, I was surprised and perhaps a little disappointed to discover that no, it did not continue the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in this alternate world. Instead, it went back to the time of the Sundering to tell the story of those events through the eyes of a number of characters both historical and fictional. I found it a much less engaging novel than Uncharted, at least partly because most of the historical domain characters were relatively obscure, and thus didn't give me quite the level of connection as I did with Merriwether Lewis or Sacajawea.
However, I still wanted to find out where the series was going, so when I discovered this volume as a forthcoming book on the Baen website, I started watching our library's catalog for it to appear. Weeks and then months went by with no sign of it. Finally I decided to take matters into my own hands and put through a request for the library to acquire a copy.
Once I actually acquired it, I found that my excitement didn't last as long as I'd hoped. The first scene, in which we see Franklin's famous experiment with the kite, only changed by the existence of functional magic, is good enough. There's a mention that the key Franklin used is not just a random key, but is made of the same material as a bell which corresponds roughly to the Liberty Bell in our own world (and is presumably the bell in the cover illustration). Although the character who presents it to Franklin calls it a keepsake, someone with a decent awareness of colonial American history is going to recognize the significance of the link.
At first the experiment proceeds unremarkably, until the moment an exceptionally powerful bolt of lightning threatens his son William. At that moment Franklin wills his son to be spared, and something fundamental changes. The key glows in unearthly light, and then the lightning retreats back into the heavens and Franklin realizes that, in that moment, everything has changed.
So far, so good. We've established that this is not quite the history we've learned in school, although it's close enough to be recognizable. And we all know that, once Benjamin Franklin has his encounter with magic, he's going to systematically study it the same way he studied electricity and other natural phenomena in our world.
The next several chapters go back and forth between Franklin's efforts in Philadelphia and the strange doings of a man by the name of Overton in London, who's been tutoring a young woman by the name of Polly in the ways of magic. However, these two storylines soon draw together as Overton disappears, Polly and her mother are threatened by the King's own guard, and Franklin receives some unwelcome visits by a mysterious Italian man who pretends to be merely a stage magician, but has some real magic as well.
A good bit of this revolves around some mysterious journals which seem to somehow exist in multiple copies, yet are clearly handwritten, and most likely the private records of a mysterious magician whose work spans centuries, who is familiar with a variety of languages and methods of writing, from modern English to Latin and Greek, Old English and Old Norse runes, Hebrew and Arabic and perhaps even Chinese or one of the other East Asian languages that borrowed the hanzi for their written language. Franklin is given them by an associate who may well be betraying them, and then has them taken away by the mysterious Italian. Polly and her mother find copies in a locked closet, which may or may not be what the King's men were so interested in.
And speaking of the King, it turns out that King George II is himself a dabbler in magic, having been a student of the mysterious Mr. Overton who may be the legendary wizard Merlin of King Arthur's court, or may just be a Welsh soldier from the time of Harold Godwinson who made the whole Camelot thing up to increase his prestige in the wake of the Norman Conquest. However, the King is growing more and more obsessed with being able to concentrate to himself the magical power that has been accumulating on Earth every time Halley's Comet passes by. He's assisted in this by his mistress, who is a magic-user of no small talent herself.
These facts come to the fore when Benjamin Franklin goes to London to petition for a change in the colonial charter of Pennsylvania, to remove the Penn family's proprietorship and make it a Crown colony. And here's where the novel really goes off the rails.
I've often said that prequels are far harder to write than sequels, for the simple reason that the events of the prequel must read as if they were always in the background of the volumes that came before. And quite honestly, when I read about Franklin's confrontation first with the Penn family and then with King George and his inner circle, I just can't square it with Franklin as I remember him in the beginning of Uncharted. To be sure, those scenes were all from the point of view of Merriwether Lewis, and we never got to find out what Franklin was thinking in those scenes. But the whole premise of Uncharted was the Lewis and Clark Expedition being an effort to find a way to reconnect with the mother country and the colonists' proper sovereign, which simply doesn't square with the idea of Franklin personally battling King George II in magical combat for the future of the world (and destroying the Liberty Bell in the process).
In retrospect, the business in Council of Fire about the younger scion of the House of Hannover who was training as a naval officer and who accepted kingship over the French and English colonies doesn't square all that well with Uncharted either. After all, if the colonists now have a king of their own, why would Franklin want to be reconnecting with the mother country, and a king who might well regard his royal relative's actions about as highly as the first Elizabeth viewed those of certain royal relatives of her own, including Lady Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots. However, given that Benjamin Franklin is never even mentioned in that novel, it was easier to overlook the disconnect between the events in it and what was presented as the backstory of the Sundering in Uncharted
Part of the problem may well be having new authors write each volume. Sarah Hoyt co-wrote Uncharted right about the time that her difficulties with Baen's management were coming to a head. Her replacement in Council of Fire could be understood as a matter of office politics, but after this volume, I'm wondering whether changing authors for every volume might have been the plan from the beginning.
Way back in the 1980's and 90's Jim Been started the practice of teaming up-and-coming authors with established authors as a way of growing new authors' audiences, the opposite of many other publishing houses' growing tendency to take new authors on for two or three books, and if they didn't have stellar success right out of the gate, dumping them and rendering their names unpublishable. Many of his best-known authors, including Eric Flint, John Ringo, and Tom Kratman, had their careers really take off as a result of this sort of apprenticeship. It's possible that the Arcane America series was intended to serve a similar purpose, creating an established audience who could be introduced to new authors with each new volume.
Unfortunately, I don't think it worked as well as as intended. Having so many different writers has instead led to a loss of continuity that really hobbles the appeal of the series in my mind. And while I'd love to find out what happens after Uncharted, I'm not sure that it would be handled with nearly the deftness that Sarah Hoyt brought to that first novel. And given that no new volume appears to be coming in the new year, I'm beginning to wonder if management has decided the project didn't work out as well as planned and is pulling the plug.
It's a very disappointing situation, because I really found the concept fascinating and was hoping to see a 'verse develop that would be as big, varied and complex as Eric Flint's Ring of Fire 'verse.Buy Caller of Lightning from Amazon.com
Review posted January 2, 2022.
