Liz Bourke Reviews The Ghosts of Trappist by K.B. Wagers
The Ghosts of Trappist, K.B. Wagers (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06311-516-3, $32.99, 560pp, hc) June 2023.
The Ghosts of Trappist, the third book in K.B. Wagers’s highly enjoyable NeoG series, is also a lot of fun. Perhaps due to the circumstances in which I read it, or perhaps due to the narrative choice to weave fragments of past events into the present in brief interstitial chapters, its first half feels less coherent than previous installments in the series, but it all comes together into a surprisingly explosive climax.
The NeoG, the Near Earth Orbital Guard, performs much the same function in space as the Coast Guard does for the sea. (Though Wagers’s NeoG is an armed and militarised service with law enforcement as well as rescue duties, making it more like the US Coast Guard than the Coast Guard services with which I’m more familiar.) The two previous volumes focused largely on the crew of the Interceptor (space patrol and rescue craft) Zuma’s Ghost, but this one expands the cast of characters to include other Interceptor crews based in the Trappist system, where Earth’s one extrasolar settlement has managed to successfully maintain itself.
Ships have been going missing in the Trappist system. More ships than the usual hazards of mischance or navigation should account for. Worse, at least one of those ships has reappeared, empty, with no evidence for what’s happened to its crew. This mystery is what’s absorbing the professional attention of the NeoG crews at Trappist, including Zuma’s Ghost and Dread Treasure. Their personal attention is split between the traditional Boarding Games, when NeoG crews compete in mental and physical challenges against the other uniformed services in a media spectacle, and their own more metaphorical ghosts.
If the previous NeoG books had consistent protagonists, they were Lieutenant Maxine ‘‘Max’’ Carmichael, of the wealthy Carmichael industrial dynasty, and Petty Officer – now Chief Petty Officer – Altandai ‘‘Jenks’’ Khan, who ended up fast friends despite their different life experiences. In The Ghosts of Trappist, Ensign Nell ‘‘Sapphi’’ Zika and Commander D’Arcy Montaglione – Dread Treasure’s commanding officer – also take centre stage.
Sapphi died briefly not that long ago. Revived from that short electrocution, she doesn’t feel exactly the same – not least because she’s still mourning a potential relationship partner who was killed in a terrorist-style attack on NeoG’s Jupiter base. As Zuma’s Ghost’s hacker and coding specialist, she should at least be at home in the Verge, the virtual reality environment that she relies on to do her work, but she keeps hearing (or seeing) unnerving pleas for help, as well as music that she can’t quite place, and that’s before attacks on her in the Verge start damaging the physical infrastructure she uses to connect to it. Meanwhile Doge, Jenks’s robot dog, is acting oddly, and neither Sapphi nor Jenks are quite ready to put words to their suspicions about what’s happening to Doge’s programming. When one of Sapphi’s old flames reappears, it seems like a chance for something new – but is Yasu still interested in Sapphi for her own sake? Sapphi’s worried that he hasn’t changed enough since their breakup, and that he’s only using her to get at something he wants more.
D’Arcy Montaglione is struggling to come to terms with the betrayal of a longtime friend and crew member whose betrayal got other members of his crew killed. He’s having a hard time with it, and a harder time unbending enough to integrate new people to his crew, even though he knew one of the newcomers, Master Chief Emel Shevreaux, growing up on Mars. If D’Arcy can’t get his shit together, he’ll end up flying a desk – or worse, fail his crew at a critical moment. He’s at the front lines of the mystery of the missing ships, and it’s starting to look as though the answer might be worse than either pirates or misadventure – especially when a NeoG ship that’s been missing for years reappears to attack Dread Treasure and a civilian vessel.
Max is still reckoning with familial disapproval of her choice of careers, and the Carmichael wealth and influence means that they have the means to express that disapproval in extensive ways. Jenks, on the other hand, faces the prospect of relatively settled domesticity on Trappist with her lovers and a pair of potential stepchildren. Their pasts are looking over both their shoulders. Meanwhile NeoG newcomer Emel is haunted by the ghost of her failed marriage and the choices she made that led to its end.
The Ghosts of Trappist is a novel that enjoys playing with metaphorical hauntings, as well as with the ghost ships that are the title’s most obvious referent. The past and its consequences are a palpable presence for all of the characters, one that leaves imprints on who they are and the choices they make in the present. One of the titular ghosts of Trappist is a piece of the past older than any of the characters expect, and it means they – and Sapphi in particular – are going to have to reckon with some dangerous revelations that have the potential to disrupt… everything about the Trappist settlement.
As usual, K.B. Wagers delivers a rollicking space adventure, by turns serious and funny, full of witty banter, explosive tension, relatable characters, and families found and made. The Ghosts of Trappist is queer and trans-inclusive all the way down – as you might expect from Wagers’s track record and the NeoG series to date – and while the additional inclusion of a trans antagonist is fraught in the current global political climate, said antagonist is a fully rounded, complex character whose ambition and poor life choices have nothing to do with his gender identity and everything to do with him being an asshole.
The Ghosts of Trappist is a very enjoyable ride. I hope Wagers writes more in this series, or at least in one very like it: they have a wonderful knack for writing books that I find absolutely delightful entertainment.
Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, is out now from Aqueduct Press. Find her at her blog, her Patreon, or Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council and the Abortion Rights Campaign.
This review and more like it in the June 2023 issue of Locus.
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