Review: The Sun Runners, by James Bow
The Sun Runners
James Bow
478 pages
Release: November 12, 2024
ISBN 9781998273188
Publisher: Shadowpaw Press
James Bow is a science fiction and fantasy author living in Ontario, Canada, who works as a communications officer for a charitable land trust protecting lands from development.
First, the marketing blurb for The Sun Runners:
Lieutenant Adelheid Koning was only twenty-three when the Earth’s long fight against its environment ended in collapse and nuclear war. Earth’s sudden silence leaves the colonies of the inner solar system without lifelines, in various stages of self-sufficiency.
Or, in Mercury’s case, not.
To help her fellow stranded colonists of Mercury survive starvation and a breakdown of order, Adelheid fights some cold equations and makes some hard choices, ending up wearing an iron crown as queen of one of the rail cities of Mercury, constantly moving to stay ahead of the Sun.
Fifty years later, Adelheid’s granddaughter, Frieda, is a seventeen-year-old princess who would rather be an engineer. Frieda’s life is shattered when a suspicious accident takes one of her arms—and is then turned upside-down when her mother dies from that accident. Frieda is left a young and vulnerable queen, locking horns with her grandmother, who is now regent and dowager.
When the Earth makes contact again, after fifty years of silence, Frieda is eager to end Mercury’s isolation, but Adelheid is suspicious of the Earth’s sudden return, and wary of the other latitude towns’ desires to accept all that the Earth is offering, without question.
With thousands of lives on the line, is it wise to hope for healing? Or are we forever defined by what we do in the dark?
The Sun Runners sits comfortably in the YA genre, a coming-of-age tale of hardship and political intrigue, set on Mercury, but rings more of science fantasy or steampunk than hard science fiction. I say that because there are many world-building problems with which scientists would take issue, and often I found myself raising that question: how do they live? It should be noted here, I am not a scientist, but even so my sense of credulity was challenged.
Mercury is populated by Earth colonists who live in cities which run on rails, which in turn keep ahead of the deadly sunrise — an interesting concept, if not quite fully realized by way of a credible, functioning society complete with the ability to create all the manufacturing and food production required for a healthy population. Bow does deal with this, but not sufficiently to make his world alive and arresting to the reader.
The main protagonist, and Bow’s reluctant hero, is a young woman Frieda, princess and heir to one of Mercury’s rail cities. It struck me as a bit anachronistic that the city should be governed by royalty, especially in light of the fact there has to be the ability to travel through space, to successfully colonize a planet so close to the Sun, and because of that one wonders why humans would cling to an ancient, and outdated form of government. But I pick nits.
Frieda herself is a diffident protagonist, often admirable, if a bit too perfect. Her interactions with her peers, and those who would control her, most notably her grandmother, the dowager and regent Queen, are predictable and ring of our current, modern youth, so there are no real stretches of the imagination there.
Bow’s writing is easy and readable, not luminous, but competent enough to draw in a reader. The pacing is good, descriptions handled well.
Inspiring, brain-exploding literature this isn’t. But what The Sun Runners can offer is a good, comfortable escape into a world you might not have imagined, peopled by characters who take you on a journey.