Into the Dark by J.A. Sutherland

[Parson]

Into the Dark is an interesting read. On the one hand it is a fine Science Fiction story of a young woman, Alexis Carew, who is forced by the social rules of her world to either marry by the time she turns 16 or lose her rights to her families extensive properties. She finds none of the young men who court her to be acceptable. As a desperate gamble to bypass marriage to someone she does not fancy, and yet to hang on to the family lands, she enlists in the navy and Into the Dark is mainly the story of her first cruise. The story is done well and I was engaged from the beginning.

I did have a hard time buying into the idea that many new worlds would adopt the societal standards of the 17th and 18th centuries.

There is a wrinkle in the book that alternately makes me think it's brilliant and stupid. The brilliant part is that the ships sail between the stars at Faster than Light (FTL) speeds by way of Dark Matter and Energy. The stupid part is that they are run like old time sailing ships. With people to haul in the sails, steering by nearly dead reckoning, etc.

Between the societal standards of the world at the time when sail was king, and the actual sailing of the star ships, there were times that I nearly lost the feeling that this was science fiction and not historical fiction. But the story is king, and the story was good. I am working on the third in the series.

 

[Vertigo]

Nice Review @Parson!

I looked at this series but was put off by exactly the points you have mentioned; I thought it looked a bit whimsical and escapist. There was a time in SF when it was quite fashionable to portray futures with societies blatantly modelled on our own past (Poul Anderson was, I think, particularly guilty of this) and I always struggled to understand any justification for such an approach. I can see the idea of light sails and can almost imagine taking that idea into FTL as you have described but not, I'm afraid, sails that have yardarms and manually managed rigging and such like. I can just see myself fighting against that basic tenet throughout reading the books.

 

[Parson]

Thanks @Vertigo ... This was the precise reason I put those details in.