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Into the Void: Linesman Explores Politics, War, and Spaceships with Feelings
Linesman is the first book in a new space opera series from S.K. Dunstall, an adventure that combines statecraft, unlikely alliances, and corporate betrayals with barely understood, truly alien technology. It’s both a galaxy-wide political thriller and the intimate journey of one lonely, perpetually demoralized man learning to trust himself amid constant doubt and uncertainty.
Ean Lambert, level ten linesman, is locked into an abusive long-term work contract. But as long as he gets to work with the lines at port—the set of ten pieces of energy that control the whole of a spaceship and allow it to travel through the Void—he’s happy enough to endure. Fixing the lines, straightening them so they sing true, is what Ean is good at, and he enjoys both the work and the camaraderie he feels with the lines themselves.
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Ean works the lines by singing, and he’s good at his job. Once he touches a line, it stays healthy. His reputation extends far beyond port, out into space. Even so, he expects spend another 10 years in his current contract, trapped in an unhealthy relationship with his greedy cartel master, before escaping to marginally better opportunities. A chance encounter with Crown Princess Michelle, a leader within the Alliance, delivers his contract into her hands, and ultimately tosses him into a sprawling galactic war and leaves him caught between multiple governments in a plot to ensure the destruction of the Alliance.
Ean’s biggest problem is that he’s the only linesman who sings to the lines, or even believes they respond to linesman at all. Even as certified level ten, he’s disdained by his fellows for the odd way he works, his inability to reach the lines without sound. When the Alliance attempts to access a newly discovered alien ship that destroys anything that comes too close, however, all quickly realize that, however peculiar his methods, Ean’s ability to work the lines will be integral in the coming war between those vying for control—control of the alien ship, the void gates, open trade, production of the line technology, and linesmen themselves.
Linesman is a quick-moving space story with an abyssal political plot at its center, one so complicated (and at times convoluted), Ean is left adrift and bemused by the decisions of the politicians he works for and the soldiers he works with. Having never travelled the Void due to his restricted contract, and with the threat of war looming, Ean begins to lose his grip both physically and emotionally as the deep space lines threaten to overwhelm him. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, nor does anyone around him, until a betrayal in the Alliance ranks reveals a new layer to his skills Ean could have never predicted.
Though political drama permeates this story from the beginning to end, it’s also a character study: the long, hard story of a poor child with few opportunities taking the only way out, enduring gas-lighting, and living with denial of agency. Ean struggles through the complications of his past, even as the situation between the Alliance and the other hostile groups worsens, then explodes into open conflict. Though oftentimes subsumed by the politics, the lines—and Ean’s relationship with them—slowly become his key strength, critical to his mental health, and he begins to realize he’s the only one with the ability to solve the mystery of the alien ship. As a war blossoms around him, he struggles to undo years of self-doubt, and his future as a linesman grows ever more uncertain as he becomes a useful piece in a political game.
Linesman is only the beginning of Ean’s story: his realization of how truly special his abilities are, his journey to learn to trust himself as much as he trusts the lines. Because once he meets the alien ship, and encounters its own lines of energy, Ean learns the truth: everything everyone thought they knew about the lines was wrong.
Linesman is available now.