Review: Grand Central Arena, by Ryk E. Spoor

[Russ Allbery]

Grand Central Arena
by Ryk E. Spoor

Series:    Arenaverse #1
Publisher: Baen
Copyright: May 2010
ISBN:      1-4391-3355-7
Format:    Mass market
Pages:     671

Ariane Austin is an unlimited space obstacle racing pilot, recruited at
the start of the book for the first human test of a faster-than-light
drive. She was approached because previous automated tests experienced
very strange effects, if they returned at all. The drive seems to work
as expected, but all AIs, even less-intelligent ones, stopped working
while the drive was engaged and the probe was outside normal space. The
rules of space obstacle racing require manual control of the ship,
making Ariane one of the few people qualified to be a pilot.

Ariane plus a crew of another seven are assembled. They include the
scientist who invented the drive in the first place, and a somewhat
suspicious person named Marc DuQuesne. (Pulp SF fans will immediately
recognize the reference, which makes the combination of his past
secrets and the in-universe explanation for his name rather
unbelievable.) But when the drive is activated, rather than finding
themselves in the open alternate dimension they expected, they find
themselves inside a huge structure, near a model of their own solar
system, with all of their companion AIs silenced.

Ryk E. Spoor is better known to old Usenet people as Sea Wasp. After
all these years of seeing him in on-line SF communities, I wanted to
read one of his books. I'm glad I finally did, since this was a lot of
fun. Grand Central Arena starts as a Big Dumb Object story, as the
characters try to figure out why their shortcut dimension is filled
with a giant structure, but then turns into a fun first contact story
and political caper when they meet the rest of the inhabitants. The
characterization is a bit slapdash and the quality of the writing isn't
anything special, but the plot moves right along. I stayed happily lost
in the book for hours.

As you might guess from the title, the environment in which the
intrepid human explorers find themselves is set up to provoke conflict.
That conflict has a complex set of rules and a complex system of rule
enforcement. Figuring out both is much of the plot of this book. The
aliens come in satisfyingly pulpish variety, and this story has a
better excuse than most for the necessary universal translator
(although I do have to note that none of the aliens act particularly
alien). There are a lot of twisty politics and factions to navigate, a
satisfying and intriguing alien guide and possible ally, political and
religious factions with believable world views, a surprisingly
interesting justification for humans being able to punch above their
weight, a ton of juicy questions (only some of which get answered), and
some impressively grand architecture. Spoor's set pieces don't do that
architecture as much justice as, say, Iain M. Banks would, but he still
succeeds in provoking an occasional feeling of awe.

One particular highlight is that the various alien factions have
different explanations for why the Arena exists, encourage the humans
to take sides, and are not easily proven right or wrong. Spoor does a
great job maintaining a core ambiguity in the fight between the alien
factions. The humans are drawn to certain allies, by preference or
accident or early assistance, but those allies may well be critically
and dangerously wrong about the nature of the world in which they find
themselves. As befits a political and religious argument that has gone
on for centuries, all sides have strong arguments and well-worn
rebuttals, and humans have no special advantage in sorting this out.
This is not how this plot element is normally handled in SF. I found it
a refreshing bit of additional complexity.

The biggest grumble I had about this book is that Spoor keeps resorting
to physical combat to resolve climaxes. I know the word "arena" is
right there in the title of the book, so maybe I shouldn't have
expected anything else. But the twisty politics were so much more fun
than the detailed descriptions of weapons or RPG-style combat scenes in
which I could almost hear dice rolling in the background. Spoor even
sets up the rules of challenges so that they don't need to involve
physical violence, and uses that fact a few times, but keeps coming
back to technology-aided slug-fests for most of the tense moments. I
think this would have been a more interesting book if some of those
scenes were replaced with more political trickiness.

That said, the physical confrontations are in genre for old-school
space opera, which is definitely what Grand Central Arena is. It has
that feel of an E.E. "Doc" Smith book (which is exactly what Spoor was
going for from the dedication), thankfully without the creepy gender
politics. The primary protagonist is a woman (without any skeevy
comments), Spoor is aware of and comfortable with the range of options
in human sexuality other than a man and a woman, and at no point does
anyone get awarded a woman for their efforts. He didn't completely
avoid all gender stereotypes (all the engineers are men; the other
women are the medic and the biologist), but it was good enough to me to
not feel irritated reading it. For throwback space opera, that's sadly
unusual.

If you're in the mood for something Lensman-like but with modern
sensibilities, and you aren't expecting too much of the writing or the
characterization, give Grand Central Arena a try. It's not great
literature, but it's a solid bit of entertainment. (Just be warned that
most of the secrets of the Arena are not revealed by the end of the
book, and will have to wait for sequels.) I'll probably keep reading
the rest of the series.

Followed by Spheres of Influence.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2018-12-17

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>