[Book Review] On Vicious Worlds (Kindom 2) — Bethany Jacobs
The sequel to the brilliant debut These Blighted Stars, kicking off the Kindom series, On Vicious Worlds continues the tale of vengeance shaping the forces of mankind’s dominion across the stars.
Bethany Jacob’s debut novel These Blighted Stars was praised enough in the corners of my vision as a modern SFF consumer, especially one who prefers the grimmer and darker side of the genre. The first entry to the Kindom trilogy was hailed as a dark revenge tale with plenty of grit, graphic violence, and Machiavellian scheming with strong characterization. Picked up on a vim, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed These Blighted Stars for those very reasons. So when a review copy of the sequel, On Vicious Worlds came up on my feed, I snapped it right up.
At its heart, the Kindom trilogy told via the first two entries centers around the struggle for survival of the “little man” of the Treble union against the governing eponym, the Kindom. This tale is told via the twists and turns of Cleric Chono (Hand of the religious Clerisy, one of the three major factions of the Kindom, the others being the bureaucratic Secretaries, and the assassin Cloaks). as she is yanked through the burgeoning uprising of the oppressed Jeveni folk against the tyrannical Kindom. These Blighted Stars had Chono chasing the mysterious anarchist Six, as partnered with her mentor Esek Nightfoot, the heir-apparent of the Nightfoot guild family.
The standout of These Blighted Stars was the characterization, plotline, and frankly everything about Esek Nightfoot. Very rarely does an entire narrative get carried so hard by a single charismatic character, and by the Godfire, Esek was that character in this series. With the violent intelligence and gray morality of Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade by Seth Dickinson), she quickly shot to my list of favorite female antiheroes of all time. The dichotomy of the righteous-to-a-fault but fraying Cleric Chono and the calm sardonic evil wit of Esek Nightfoot carried the first book through all its violent and admittedly dark plot beats.
On Vicious Worlds broadens the scope laid out by the tight narrative of These Blighted Stars. The Jeveni have escaped the clutches of the Kindom and founded a colony on a remote planet hoping for some semblance of peace and new beginnings. But the Kindom is ever treacherous, and inlaid spies create chaos among the scared Jeveni, and therein lies one of the two major halves of the book’s plot. The other major plot arc follows Chono, now allied with the anarchist Six as they travel back to the Kindom to establish a long-term solution to the Kindom’s tyranny and to harness the Nightfoot trade.
On Vicious Worlds is told via two major POV characters to follow the two main arcs. The colony plotline is told through the enforcer Masar Hawks as he tries to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearances of his fellow enforcers, as well as other sabotage on the refugee colony still broken from generations of oppression at the hands of the Kindom. Assisting him is the cyberware hacker, Jun Ironway, the infamous Sunstep as she reconciles her new life as protector of the colony leaving her life of being an outlaw mercenary behind to work towards the greater good of her family and the colony. The other major arc told via Chono (with a few chapters from Six) takes us through their foray into the Kindom as they are thrown right back into the political intrigue as the Secretaries attempt to use her to secure their superiority over the other factions thereby making themselves sole controllers of the Kindom.
I found myself much more interested in the colony arc. Told much in the vein of a cyberpunk noir tale held much appeal, especially in the initial chapters. Much to my dismay, I found my interest fading quickly in Chono’s entire story arc, as the narrative followed tropes more closely moving through predictable plot checkpoints of the genre. Moreover, the Secretaries, being bureaucrats at their core, never felt like a serious threat or a particularly menacing antagonist. Especially when contrasted with the horrors of the Kindom, and the precise brutality of Esek Nightfoot’s arc in These Blighted Stars.
What Jacobs does incredibly well is dial into the emotional core of these characters and focus on the internal conflicts that arise from shifting loyalties, ever-changing goals, and how past trauma shapes how we perceive the world around us. Her writing of Chono’s reconciliation of her past allegiances to the Kindom, to Esek, and now to Six gives major weight to On Vicious Worlds, and in that, Jacobs succeeds to a high degree. On the other hand, the mysterious Six, now brought to the front, pales in comparison to Esek, though they occupy the same general space in the plot matrix, albeit with slightly different motivations. Jacobs struggles to fully convince us that Six is either the altruistic protagonist or the self-serving antihero, or even blends the two to keep the reader guessing. While Masar is a fine enough character, dealing with his own trauma from the first book as he finds himself out of his depth trying to investigate the noir crimes on the colony, I think Jacobs flubbed by not giving the far stronger Jun Ironway a larger role in this book.
On Vicious Worlds struggled with sequel-itis, the dreaded middle-book slump. Spending more time creating a solid backdrop for the conclusion of the series, the self-contained plot of this second entry lost some of its color. In broadening its scope, On Vicious Worlds may have created too many moving parts, diluting much of the claustrophobic gravitas that These Blighted Stars created with its razor-sharp focus.
While I greatly enjoyed These Blighted Stars, showing immense promise for the Kindom trilogy, its sequel On Vicious Worlds dimmed that fire. While Jacobs is a highly competent author writing tight prose, great action set-pieces, and credible emotional beats, her plot, and worldbuilding struggled under the burden of her ambitious expansion. I can only hope that the final entry in the Kindom trilogy, currently named, The Brutal Moon regains much of that lost fire from the debut to give us a rewarding complete trilogy.
