The Faith of Beasts is the second book of The Captive’s War trilogy, authored by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of the writing duo: Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, best known as the authors of The Expanse. This book continues the story of a far future human population conquered by an alien empire, the Carryx, and forced to serve that empire in order to survive. It’s a tale that Franck says was inspired by the biblical Babylonian exile, when Judah was conquered by the Babylonian Empire and its elite captured, brought to Babylon, and forced to serve the empire there for several decades.
The Carryx are a species in which conflict is central to their psychology. The idea of not being at war with anyone or anything is inconceivable to them. When they defeat an enemy, if they can’t find a use for them, they are eradicated. But if a species does prove useful, they’re slotted into the Carryx’s inventory of assets, a vast panoply of alien races, each serving different functions for the empire. To the Carryx, all of these subservient species are essentially domesticated animals.
The first book of the series was largely about humans proving their use, and of one human, Dafyd Alkhor, finding a way to communicate with the Carryx representative and situate humanity for surviving in this environment. Doing so involves brutal choices, choices that leave Dafyd as the liaison between the Carryx and the humans. But it also leaves most of the humans viewing him as a collaborator and therefore someone they hate and distrust. Only a few know that Dafyd is determined to find a way to destroy the Carryx.
One of his allies is the swarm, an agent of the Carryx’s enemy, a nanoscopic network of some type that infiltrates a society by consuming a person and taking on their persona. But after consuming multiple humans, the swarm has developed a personality, one who is in love with Dafyd. The swarm does not know its own origins, just its impulse to return information back to its masters.
In this book, humans are given assignments which bring them away from the capital planet. We see them involved in field work, as well as experiencing some of the battles the Carryx are fighting. And we get insights into the Carryx’s enemy, which they call “the deathless.” Aspects of that enemy were implied in the first book, and later confirmed by the novella Livesuit. In the new book, the humans learn about those aspects. But we also discover that things are more complex than they initially seem.
The writing is excellent. I had found the pacing of the first book to be slow, and was a little concerned that might be the case again here. But the pacing felt comfortable this time. I’m convinced that one of the crucial traits of reliably bestselling authors is their ability to write easy to read prose, and in this book, it seems like the team is in top form. I effortlessly burned through it in a couple of days, and finished wanting more.
So I enjoyed and recommend it. Although I do think you’d want to start with the first book in the series, The Mercy of Gods.
Would love to know what you think if you’ve read it or the first book. Or anything similar.
SelfAwarePatterns 