Guardians of Paradise (Hidden Empire) [Paperback]

For me, Jaine has become a bit of a guilty pleasure. I love her prose, I really enjoy her characters but perhaps most of all, it's her inventive story arcs that keep me clamouring for more.

Whilst the last offering was more fantasy based with just a hint of sci-fi, this one remains firmly in the latter's bosom which helps keep the tale moving.

It's fast paced with old friends returning and overall it is a very pleasing story. Whilst you can read this without having read the previous novels I'd luckily enough undergone a reread prior to starting this and noted not only the authors style improve with each successive story but I got so much more out of the hidden agenda's as well as character interaction. Beautifully written, artistically creative and an overall story that really did tick all the right boxes for me, makes Fenn a woman to watch.

I love Jaine Fenn. Her characters and intriguing world building is superb. She is one of my favorite authors and Guardians of Paradise is one of my most anticipated books this year. Let me start by telling you a bit background.

The Hidden Empire series is about the Sidhe, a race with overwhelming mental powers and beauty that has been screwing with the human race in secret for a long time. Centuries ago their Protectorate ruled the human race. But their tyranny was so great that the males of their own race joined the subjugated humans in an uprising believed to have killed all of them and freeing the human race. But now a few humans learn that they are still around.

One good thing with Jaine is that her books are self contained and can be stand by themselves. That is especially true for the previous two books that can be read independently.

Principles of Angels is about a conspiracy that could destroy a floating city to kill Nual, a renegade Sidhe. This is where Taro and Nual meet and become what they are now.

The second book Consorts of Heaven is about a secret colony where the Sidhe breed a special kind of talent only to lure them with fake religion and put them in stasis to send them off planet to use their tortured brains as jump-cores. This is where Jarek Reen regains his memories among the local barbarians and helps them overthrow the Sidhe and escapes with the secret.

Guardians of Paradise brings together the characters and plots from the previous books. Nual and Taro are now both certified Angel assassins hiding in the house Nual inherited from Elarn Reen. Jarek arrives at his dead sister's house in time to foil an assassination attempt on them and they decide to join Jarek in his crusade against the Sidhe.

The hunt takes them trough hard personal dilemmas, arduous jumps, elusive allies and equally elusive enemies. Nual and Taro goes ahead to the vacation planet that was the destination of the Consorts of Heaven to try to find the operation there while Jarek goes to a trading hub to find a hacker competent enough to hack the Sidhe datacore he stole from their ship.

The story is well paced, captivating and thrilling. I especially enjoyed the artificially induced love between Taro and Nual. The Sidhe power of healing induces love and she saved his life at the end of Principles of Angels. He is a 17 year old kid, a bit more mature than most in some respect since he grew up in the Undertow but very much his age in others and she is an alien with different ways of thinking brought up as she was in a hive-mind-like community. It has many surprising twists and turns. And every good story should have a love interest in it. The captures and escapes kept it thrilling too. And the overall journey of discovery has some big surprises at the end.

The world building is one of Jaine Fenn's strengths. This world is well thought out with its history and different political solutions. The seemingly rural vacation planet with hidden high tech corporations at war with each other while maintaining a tabu against killing is well executed and made believable.

The characters are easy to love and root for. Jaine makes them sympathetic, lifelike and believable like 'ordinary people' with special circumstances. They are human and they make mistakes maybe thats what makes the threats to them so gripping. The powers they have are not superpowers that take them out of any bind, rather the opposite it is their ingenuity that saves the day unless their friends have to come and help them. The multiple main characters hold together well and the plot doesn't diverge much.

Another great thing is that I finally get to know about how Nual became a Sidhe rebel and how she as a child was rescued by Jarek. That explained a whole lot but it also opened a can of worms that I am sure the reader will enjoy in books to come.

I got this random thought. Interesting the way you thinks about female alien villains. It doesn't feel like a gender issue here but what would I think if a male writer had the same female villains? I would probably never think about it at all if they were male...

I love journeys of discovery like the one here. Guardians of Paradise is an action adventure that puts two Angel assassin and a Free trader against sinister alien conspiracies. Jaine proves again she is a master at doling out revelations and pacing the story that keeps me captivated from beginning to end. This is enjoyable science fiction with a spice of fantasy. This book is less standalone than the previous two and I would recommend that you read them first. I don't know how long you can keep calling someone a promising new author, Jain Fenn is one of the most promising authors of this century and I am sure you would enjoy her books too.

The ending keeps me thinking and speculating on where this is going but we will have to wait until July 2011 for Bringer of Light.

Taro and Nual are Angels, formidable assassins who have discovered that the Sidhe - the long-defeated former slavemasters of humanity - have secretly returned and are undertaking clandestine operations against human interests. Their attempts to expose the truth to the rest of human society lead them into a meeting with Jarek Reen, a space trader who has had his own run-in with the Sidhe, and the formation of an alliance to bring the Sidhe down.

Guardians of Paradise is the third (of, currently, five) novels in the Hidden Empire sequence. The first two books in the sequence featured completely different characters operating on different worlds, whilst this third book brings them together and sees them pool resources to defeat the Sidhe. You can read either Principles of Angels or Consorts of Heaven first, but you need to have read both to fully appreciated Guardians of Paradise.

Like its two predecessors, Guardians of Paradise is entertainingly-written and is an easy read. Unfortunately, it lacks the dash of New Weird that made Principles of Angels so promising and threatens to languish at the same 'nice but unexciting' level as Consorts of Heaven for much of its length. The bulk of the book takes place on Kama Nui, an exotic water world which serves much of human space as a resort planet. Its inhabitants are restrained from killing (even during wars and political intrigue) by severe social customs, which reduces the level of tension to our characters (lessened even more by Nual's formidable powers) but does increase the plausibility that they could survive the situations they encounter on the planet (especially Taro, who is still green as grass in his role as an assassin).

Characterisation of the central trio of characters is adequate, but also a bit perfunctory. Other characters flitter in at the edges of the story (especially the Sidhe), but a major problem with the book is that there is little feeling of a bigger culture or society beyond what is going on in the plot. The worldbuilding is highly concentrated on the areas around our characters, but our knowledge of the wider human society beyond that is almost non-existent. Whilst this is efficient and certainly keeps the page count down, it also harms immersion in the story.

That said, an uninspiring first half takes a dramatic upward swing once our characters move into a position to confront the Sidhe directly. A rather unexpected element of horror enters the story at this point, with the revelation that there may be more threats out there than just the Sidhe, and suddenly the story and the writing kick more decisively into gear. The final section of the book is more enjoyable than what came before, with the characters and storyline clicking more decisively, and things end on a ambiguous, disturbing note.

Guardians of Paradise (***½) recovers from a stodgy first half to become a decent, compelling SF novel. It's still a bit lightweight compared to the bigger names in the genre, but certainly there are signs of Fenn developing into a more interesting and talented author. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.