Book Review: The First Sister

By Ryland Johnson

Lovers of space opera have a new epic to sink their cybernetic teeth into in Linden A. Lewis’ debut novel The First Sister. The book, the first in a trilogy by the same name, is a flashy tale set in the space future on the solar system scale: mankind has colonized the local terrestrial planets where, inevitably, the divergent human civilization has fallen into conflict with itself. Like many titles in the genre, The First Sister leans heavily into romance and military drama, but it’s also a cyberpunky espionage thriller, a cynical exploration of interplanetary realpolitik, an erudite meditation on social conflict and cultural violence, and – above all – a cinematic, sensual feast of speculative fiction.

Good science fiction gives you an enticing alternate world that pulls you in and invites you to stay. Readers will want to explore the future civilization in Lewis’ The First Sister because it is both gritty and shiny, wondrous and dystopian, enlightened and profane.

The primary political conflict of the novel centers on the escalation of hostilities between two warring factions: the Icarii of Mercury and Venus and the Geans of Earth and Mars. The story unfolds through subtly meta-textual first-person and third-person accounts, which ground the overarching political narrative in the perspectival particularities of people in the world.

First Sister, the titular character of the series, serves the Gean theocracy of the Sisterhood and, as such, has attained some small degree of fragile status, but at the terrible cost of her own body and voice. Lito sol Lucius, Icarri Special Forces, survived the mean streets of Venus only to be betrayed by the military he swore to serve and is now tasked with tracking down and killing his former partner.

Characters in Lewis’ story have complex motivations that reveal the struggle of being both in and against society. They demonstrate the complicated relationships and moral conundrums we have entwined within the social fabric, where we are complicit with terrible things, even as we rebel against injustices.