Souls in the Great Machine

By Sean McMullen.
Begun 10 Aug 2006; finished 22 Aug.

This entire review contains details about the plot that could constitute as spoilers.

I’ve now read the first book of Sean McMullen’s Greatwinter trilogy, Souls in the Great Machine. (The Miocene Arrow is the second novel but I read it first.) I can now say with confidence that Greatwinter is the most innovative and creative series I’ve read since Primary Inversion (by Catherine Asaro) about 6 years ago. McMullen’s future-Earth, both familiar and alien at the same time, is a feat of world-building, and I’m in love with it. While I enjoyed the setting and scope, the characterization leaves something to be desired: the novel would be far more superior of the characters were more fleshed and open. But, on the whole, it is a great novel and a fabulous world that I’d like to experience again.

Souls in the Great Machine is set in Australia, here called ‘Australica’, two millennia in the future, where a series of catastrophic events in the past has set humanity back to a quasi-Industrial age where electromagnetic force is inaccessible. Australica is fractured into a network of states called mayorates, which have their own alliances and conflicts. All technology relies on wind, mechanics, human labour and (in the case of long-distance communication) heliostats — very different from the American civilization of The Miocene Arrow. Transport and communication across the mayorates is administered and handled by libraries and their Dragon Librarians, which form the knowledge-base of the Australican civilization. The head of the libraries is Zarvora Cybeline, an ambitious and visionary woman who conceives and builds a computer, called the Calculor, from humans.

That’s right: thousands of humans, or components as they’re called, are the raw processing power within the Calculor, who perform mathematical calculations ceaselessly and in concert, and form a self-auditing and correcting loop. The Calculor massively boosts productivity and efficiency of the mayorates’ infrastructure and economy. But that is only the byproduct of Zarvora’s plan: her ambition is to destroy the forces that are keeping electromagnetism inaccessible, and avert a predicted climate change that could wipe out human civilization.

That is only one aspect of the vast and far-ranging story. I haven’t mentioned the mysterious and fatal Call that lures humanity to their deaths, the powerful Mirrorsun of pre-Greatwinter technology, the genetically engineered aviads, the political upheavals as Zarvora gains power with her Calculor, the Dragon Librarians and enslaved components that form that astonishing computer, the characters of Lemorel, Glasken, Theresla, Darien and countless others, and the war that breaks out — on earth and in space.

This story is massive on all fronts; even more amazingly, it’s convincing, given the kind of contraints imposed on humanity by the loss of electromagnetic force and the bane of the Call. It took me some time to realize it, but when I did — I was impressed by the fact that these humans of the fortieth century did not regress in all ways to the pre-industrial dark ages. These are post-computer-age humans that, despite technological and social catastrophe, still had the vision, ingenuity and audacity to invent and discover new ways of living, and achieved such advanced levels of civilization. (Although I had to stretch my imagination to visualize a Calculor thousands of humans large, and understand that it can perform as robustly, effectively and flawlessly as a computer. Then again, a person better versed in computer science and electronics would appreciate it better.) Can you imagine our modern world without power stations or generators, calculators and all manner of electronics? This is what McMullen has created in the post-Greatwinter Earth. And it is plausible. I’m quite in love with this innovative world McMullen has created. There are details about politics, economics and culture of Australica, but the technology is by far the most captivating.

The story itself is quite convoluted. For the most part, McMullen steers the reader carefully and surely through the many subplots, but two aspects fell short: the progression of time, and characterization. The novel spans some ten years, but the transitions were, in my opinion, poorly handled. On several occasions the timeframe leapt abruptly several years into the future, right in the middle of a chapter, with only a single sentence as announcement. Such transitions were very bewildering. That in itself wouldn’t have bothered me too much, but characters change with the times too, which brings me to the second problematic aspect.

The problem was, character development was only revealed in the characters’ actions and behaviours, while virtually nothing was said about their thoughts and inner workings. The lack of explanation for these changes in character and mindset made the actions incongruous and confusing. Numerous questions came to my mind: What prompted Zarvora’s change in attitude towards the humans in her Calculor? How did Lemorel change from a dedicated and ambitious Librarian to a crazed, hate-filled warlord; where did her hatred of Zarvora and the calculors originate from, and why did she want to conquer the southeastern mayorates? What exactly prompted the changes in Glasken’s world-view? (”Years in Baelsha” doesn’t cut it: what happened to him and how did his thinking change?) How did Theresla change from a celibate abbess who murdered past suitors, to wanting to seduce Glasken? Why did Ilyire commit such a perverted act, knowing his chivalric moral code towards women? How did Darien gain the confidence of both Zarvora and her enemies, in order for her to become a double agent? What was the “mistake” that caused her to inadvertently deliver Glasken back to Calculor captivity? More questions like these arose, and I fervently hoped that they would be answered in the course of the novel, but none of them were.

The unexplained causalities and silences in character development left me very dissatisfied. A few details smelled like plot devices, inserted because the author didn’t have any better way of getting the characters out of that situation. For the most part, I get the impression that the author knows exactly how and why these characters changed, what drove and altered their motivations and outlooks, but he is not sharing it with the readers. Someone who is more interested in the world-building, technology and warfare may not miss that, but character development is also important to me, and I was left terribly frustrated by the haphazard depiction of the characters. I would’ve liked to read more of their internal voices — thoughts, fears, ambitions and desires — instead of merely outward expressions, interactions and responses to their surroundings. That introspection was conspicuously missing in this novel; The Miocene Arrow had more fully-fleshed characters, but not by much. Granted, Souls in the Great Machine is a very large novel, and to add more character development on top would probably double its length; personally, I would rather have it that way.

Thus, I failed to make any emotional connection with the characters, I was but a disinterested spectator of their lives. This, I think, was what made the novel great but not superlative. It is already excellent: a fascinating world, a huge but well-orchestrated plot, lots of action and warfare, and a myriad of diverse characters. But I wanted it to be “most good” instead of just “more good”; not only appeal to my desire for a good world, but the desire for a good story, even though the former was fulfilled above and beyond my expectations.

Nevertheless, I commend Souls in the Great Machine for its ambition and imagination, and intend to buy it (and the rest of the series) and reread it one day, because I didn’t quite catch all the little but crucial details. Perhaps rereading will also reveal more character development. McMullen has also published this story as a two-book series called Mirrorsun Rising; I understand it’s a little different from the final novel. Perhaps I should check it out.

In closing, Souls in the Great Machine is a very apt title (not to mention a great phrase in itself). Perhaps I shouldn’t be too disappointed in the characters, because at the end of the day, the machines take centre stage. The Calculor and Mirrorsun loom large, while the humans and their desires, from the enslaved components to Zarvora herself, are all eclipsed in the face of technological progress. Zarvora may have conceived of the Calculor, but in the end it becomes a legacy and a force far greater than herself. The novel’s closing statement, which declares the title, is somewhat ironic to me. Although she has indeed driven Australica’s technology into unprecedented heights, and was the first human to make contact with Mirrorsun — she is, in the end, still one of many souls in the great machine of progress.