Liz Bourke Reviews Devil’s Gun by Cat Rambo
Devil’s Gun, Cat Rambo (Tor 978-1250269355, $27.99, 288pp, hc) August 2023.
Cat Rambo’s Devil’s Gun is the kind of lightly entertaining space opera that left little strong impression in its wake. Little on me, at least: this sequel to You Sexy Thing rolls along at as fast a pace as its predecessor, but it feels more like a collection of disparate incidents than a complete narrative, and its oddball sense of humour at times sits oddly with its thematic concern with grief – people and relationships dead or changed beyond recognition, or both.
Niko Larsen was once a soldier for the Holy Hive Mind, and a good one. In order to escape being absorbed into the hive consciousness, she and a handful of the soldiers she commanded pretended to have a calling to be artists with food. It worked: she and second-in-command Darby Jen set up a restaurant, the Last Chance, and were very good indeed until the station where they were located started exploding. The events of You Sexy Thing led to their association with a bioship, the titular You Sexy Thing, and a harrowing encounter with the cruel and powerful pirate leader Tubal Last and Niko’s long-lost ex-lover Petalia, whom Niko failed to rescue from Last many years ago. The encounter with Tubal Last resulted in one member of Niko’s team, pastry chef Milly, trying to betray the crew to secure her own freedom, and the death of the young were-lion Thorn, twin brother to Talon.
The crew thought Tubal Last was dead in their escape. Unfortunately he’s not, and he’s probably out for revenge. Devil’s Gun opens with Niko deciding to track down Petalia, who wants nothing to do with her, in order to warn her about the threat posed by Last’s continued existence. Unfortunately, one of the Forerunner Gates that facilitate long-distance interstellar transport is down. Fortunately, there’s a woman who claims she can cause it to reopen. Niko thinks she’s a fraud, but this Jezli Farren both appeals to You Sexy Thing’s flamboyant and playful side, and additionally claims to know where to find a weapon that can assassinate any person its wielder wants from a vast distance – a perfect solution to the problem of Tubal Last. She travels with a paladin called Roxana, and it is this paladin who will guide them into an ancient and dangerous Forerunner artefact known as a space moth to retrieve this weapon.
Meanwhile, Gnarl, a vicious trader captain with a grudge against some members of Niko’s crew, is leading Talon into making even more terrible life choices than his grief was already helping him make. Such as giving him the material to make an illegal clone of his dead twin, which Talon wants to fill the gaping hole of his loss but who will never have Thorn’s memories. And You Sexy Thing is facilitating Talon’s bad decisions and keeping them secret from the rest of the crew. Gnarl is convinced that he can get the better of Niko’s crew, but in the guts of the space moth, confrontation is a chancy thing.
Atlanta, who thought she was an imperial heir when it turns out she was a cloned spare, is mourning the life she’d thought she’d have and still struggling to find a place for herself among the crew. She has her own demons to face – and a fascination with Roxana, and Roxana’s certainty of her calling.
Devil’s Gun feels slight. It’s an entertaining space opera adventure, with many incidents and interesting worldbuilding, but it spirals around its characters’ collections of griefs with a spackling of lighthearted humour and never quite coheres into a gripping whole. I enjoyed it and I’m curious about the characters’ next adventures, but I find myself indefinably disappointed by it, too.
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 August 2023 issue of Locus.
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