The Golden Princess
by S. M. StirlingRoc, 2014S. M. Stirling's latest novel, The Golden Princess, is the eleventh in his series of "The Change" books, and the "Change" referred to in the series title is the hinge event that happens in Stirling's 2004 novel Dies the Fire: in 1998, the world's higher technology abruptly stops working. Planes fall from the sky, large cities rapidly become nests of disease and cannibalism, and Stirling centers his action on a small (at first) cast of survivors in Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. That group of characters haltingly explores the nature of the "Change" that's come over their lives, learning that even certain laws of physics have been altered - gunpowder no longer ignites.In that new world, new organizations arise. Groups adhere and try to figure out working ways to grow food and secure themselves from marauders, and of course those marauders organize themselves too, including a strutting former medieval role-playing enthusiast who finds, somewhat improbably, that his skill with a broadsword allows him to set himself up as a warlord.At some moments during that first novel, various of Stirling's characters pause from the stresses of mere survival to wonder what the heck happened, what the Change actually was, and it's possible that some readers thought an answer might be in the offing. After all, in a novel where something radically weird happens and changes everything, it's pretty natural to expect that the why of that something will be in large part the point of the novel.Not so, it turns out. As the "Change" novels continued to appear, as Stirling gave his readers the further adventures of the various bands of good guys and bad guys as they settled into armed encampments in the Pacific Northwest, the whole question of why receded farther and farther into the background. Characters less and less seemed to think about it, concentrating instead on building, for bizarre reasons known only to Stirling, a near-perfect duplicate of European feudalism during the Middle Ages. Almost overnight, there are castles and mounted warriors, kings and princes, mercenaries and fighting priests and serving wenches. There are hardly any actual libraries left, but even so, Stirling's narrative is soon filled with the kinds of nerdy period details his characters could not possibly know and would never intuit without knowing; right away, readers start encountering varlets, votive cases, liege-lords, doeskin breeks, cote-hardies, houppelandes, lancers, crossbowmen, destriers, grapnels, vassals, shielings, demesnes, grand stewards, and viziers (with pagan holidays like Beltane and Samhain thrown in). As the books go on, it becomes clear that the main difference Stirling sees between the historical Middle Ages and his new world lies not in what caused it but what watches over it: his new pagans and his fighting Christians, it turns out, have gods who actually listen - time and again in dramatic moments, these characters are imbued with supernatural communions (and the bad guys have them too). These novels are classified in bookstores as science fiction, but they're ideologically far more suitable for the religious fiction section.It's a weird metamorphosis, and it's only Stirling's tremendous gifts as a storyteller that keep it all from collapsing under all its own implausibilities. There's no reason why these characters should settle into a picture-perfect replica of the 1180s just because that's the rough era they now find their technology; there's no reason why they should suddenly be spouting textbook-terms for complex mechanical weaponry none of them had ever heard of before the Change; there's certainly no reason why a whole group of characters should start talking in a Hollywood-style Oirish.And, increasingly, there's no reason for those of Stirling's readers still stubbornly wondering why the Change happened in the first place to stick around; it's pretty clear that Stirling is no longer interested - if he ever was - in somehow bringing his story around to the point where it started. Instead, he assumes is readers will simply be interested in the ongoing adventures of his constantly-expanding cast of characters as they go from festival to joust to tournament to holy war. So opens The Golden Princess, whose events take place nearly half a century after the Change. Most of the cast - including the title character, Princess Orlaith (daughter of the boringly perfect Rudi Mackenzie, High King of Montival, the renamed Northwest region)(tall, handsome, powerful, charismatic Rudi was the teflon star of the last half-dozen Change novels, an' it's glad I am, me boyo, that he's now gone to his Maker, so's I am) - were born long after the Change, know nothing of the pre-Change world and care nothing for it; their concerns are entirely medieval, with Stirling's innovation of intervening supernaturalities stirred in. Princess Orlaith, for instance, has inherited from her dead father a supernatural weapon called the Sword of the Lady, which is not only unbreakable and irresistible but also gives its bearer divine insights:
Chambers opened within her mind, currents of thought too vast and strange to even be given names, then surged away leaving a sense of potential, as if her soul was stretched like an iridescent bubble vanishing-thin, hollow, and waiting to be filled. She would have staggered, would have cried out, but it was too swift and too large. Eons passed in an instant.
And the main added element in these later novels can be found in The Golden Princess in the form of Reiko, the Empress of Japan, who's arrived on North American shores ahead of her own ravening bad guys ... medieval Empress of Japan, because, utterly unbelievably, it turns out the exact same reflexive reversion to the Middle Ages happened in Japan as well, with as little struggle as it happened in the environs of Seattle:
Her people were the children and grandchildren of remnants preserved on offshore islands with enough food - just. And not too impossibly many mouths as the Change flashed around the globe like a flicker of malignant lightning and the great world-machine stopped in its tracks. On some of those islands, the aged and infirm had refused food or opened their veins or walked into the ocean lest they starve the children, or overburden those strong enough to work and fight and breed.
The Golden Princess, make no mistake, provides extremely entertaining reading. Stirling writes clear dialogue, frank sensuous scenes, very effective humorous moments, and utterly hypnotic prolonged action-sequences. Fans of the series will find a great deal to enjoy here, and they'll be ready - as newcomers will not - for Stirling's by now thudding, nearly-midsentence ending to the book. And for those readers who think, "so Something Happens to the world to stop its technology, and then ...?" Well, their answer is still and then, and then. They take up the book forewarned.
