The Promise of the Child Is a Totally Bonkers Space Opera Debut

In a decidedly post-human future, mankind has spread to the stars, and transformed itself into a wide diversity of forms and functions. The galaxy is utterly devoid of life not descended from the Old World of our origin. Science has had its moment, and still has a place for the technologically and biologically advanced among the human diaspora, but religion and superstition have developed equal power in a universe utterly empty of even the smallest microbe not carried by travelers from Earth.
There’s a lot going on here. At least three broadly variant offshoots of mankind are on a collision course after a long period of tenuous peace. Among the Amaranthine, who perch atop the pecking order in a decadent state of sleepy near-immortality, a newcomer named Aaron the Long-Life is making claims to leadership in contravention of tradition. (Well, he a “newcomer” in the sense that no one really knows where he came from, but he’s professing to be the eldest being in a culture with a strict age-based hierarchy.) There’s a civil brewing between the followers of the current leader and those of the new, with Aaron’s identity and origins an ages-old mystery. And, not for nothing, there’s a ongoing hunt for a device of extraordinary promise that may hold the secret to the human soul.
There are knights and barbarians, quests, murders, and galactic conquests. The cast is expansive, and the plot jumps liberally through time and space. Toner drops you smack into the middle of his mythology and expects you to keep up. Careful reading is definitely rewarded, and a bit of buy-in; the opening chapters left me cold, but it doesn’t take long to adapt to Toner’s rhythms. And even then, there are plenty of compensations and characters on hand to serve as guides. Among the most fascinating is Sotiris, an elderly Amaranthine mourning the death of his sister and struggling to stave off the encroaching effects of the dementia that inevitably afflicts his people after so many centuries of life. His hallucinations might be just that, or they might be long-forgotten memories that could unlock the secrets of Aaron the Long-Life. There’s also Lycaste, the book’s most compelling, relatable character, a wealthy and shy loner whose unrequited crush leads him to commit a crime that he never believed himself capable of. On the run, he encounters the larger world(s) and is eventually caught up in events that will reshape the galaxy.
This is the purest example of space opera we’ve seen in some time, thoroughly blurring the line between science fiction and fantasy. The wildly divergent post-humans of our future galaxy could just as well be from the pages of Tolkien; the science can be indistinguishable from magic. (Not unrealistically, come to think of it.) A lot of sci-fi draws straight lines between now and all the tomorrows to come, but Toner posits a weirder, wobblier path to the future. This first-in-a-trilogy builds an intriguing new world, and gives us every reason to have high hopes about what’s coming next. The book is challenging, ambitious, and rewarding, and it’s impossible not to admire Toner’s wild imagination and carefully constructed world. This thing is bonkers, no question. It’s also one helluva debut.
The Promise of the Child is available September 22.