It’s an intriguing and dangerous universe Edward M. Lerner’s Championship B’tok attempts to create. The Hugo nominated novelette opens on a universe that is shrunken and more interconnected than ours, complete with hostile alien races and interstellar computing networks connecting the disparate planets and races. The Snakes are a race that has been conquered after an attempt to conquer others, and now, quietly, they plot to rise again.
There’s a lot of potential and creative energy in Lerner’s story, but it never quite comes together in satisfying way. Because the story is part of a larger set of tales that Lerner writes, and though this is billed as a stand alone, I wondered if it was because I hadn’t read anything else that I was often lost. Really, though, I think it’s just a lack of narrative connection between scenes and characters, leaps joined by sudden exposition of details otherwise unavailable, and sudden plot resolution that left me feeling…unresolved.
Also, there’s the protagonist failing to protag very well. Sometimes it feels like it’s going to move into a noir like mystery, and others its international espionage. In th end, it just ends…
The novelette feels like a good first draft, but here it is up for the Hugo. There’s potential, so I give it three stars, but ultimately, it feels forgettable.
Championship B'tok
InterstellarNet
Science-fiction
FoxAcre Press
February 27, 2015
142
The name of the game is B’tok. It’s how the alien Snakes learn military strategy. B’tok is to chess as chess is to rock-paper-scissors. You do not want to tick off Snakes — especially when aggrieved Snakes may be the least of your worries. This thrilling adventures moves the story of the InterstellarNet forward as only Edward M. Lerner could do it. This special edition includes not only the text of the Hugo-nominated story, but also the version of Championship B’tok that forms part of Ed’s thrilling new novel, InterstellarNet: Enigma, to be published by FoxAcre Press in Spring 2015.
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