The Knife and the Serpent

If I need something that will be a quick and entertaining read, not too challenging or depressing, I know I can always rely on Tim Pratt. Their books are inventive, amusing, and contain just enough mild peril to keep you reading. The books also tend to include a few queer characters, Pratt being genderfluid, which is nice.

The Knife and the Serpent is a new departure for Pratt, in that there are no previous novels in the universe. However, they have tested the waters with a couple of short stories featuring the concept of Nigh-Space. This is a version of the multiverse which is described as being multiple planes of existence stacked on top of one another like a ream of paper. Moving between nearby planes is fairly easy, but the further apart two planes are the harder it becomes. Thankfully for the rest of the multiverse, Earth does not yet have inter-dimensional transit capabilities.

Our hero, Glenn Browning, is a mild-mannered PhD student at the University of Berkeley. Imagine his surprise when he discovers that his sexy new girlfriend, Vivy Sattari, is secretly an alien spy whose job it is to help keep Nigh-Space free of Fascists and other unpleasant and aggressive persons.

Imagine his surprise also when he discovers that his ex, Tamsin Culver, is also an alien and is heiress to an arms dealing empire on another plane. She’s on Earth because her family was the victim of a mafia-style hit operation by a rival family, and she’s the only survivor. But blood breeds true, and Sin, as she likes to be called, wants her family empire back, and more.

Add to this the fact that Glenn is an enthusiastic sub who very much enjoys being tied up and ordered about by powerful, confident women. Oh dear.

Actually Pratt doesn’t make as much of that as I expected. I had thought that we’d see Glenn torn between his two loves, but in practice Tamsin is so awful that there really isn’t a choice. Pratt must have had enormous fun writing her, because she is utterly selfish and megalomanical. At one point Pratt actually has her say, “After all, why shouldn’t I get everything that I want.” But Tamsin, who is the viewpoint character for half of the chapters, is brilliant at self-justification. She really didn’t have any choice about murdering all those people. It was them or her.

As this is space opera, the book wouldn’t be complete without a sentient spaceship. That would be Vivy’s sidekick, who calls himself The Wreck of the Edmund Pevensie. For much of the book he ends up manifesting as a very annoying foppish Englishman.

The other interesting innovation in the book is something called snap-trace. It is a means of travel between planes invented by Vivy’s employers, a group called The Interventionists. The way that snap-trace works is that you concentrate on something or someone that means a huge amount to you, and you are immediately drawn through the multiverse to where that thing or person is. It is a method of inter-dimensional travel powered by love. Someone should tell Russell T Davies. I’m sure he could find a use for it.

I guess I should probably describe this book as Cosy Space Opera. If that sort of thing tickles your fancy, I warmly recommend it. If you prefer something meatier, more grim, or with less kink, you should maybe give it a miss. But personally I think that everyone deserves a little light-hearted fun now again. And the beauty of a book is that you don’t need a safe word, you can just put it down.

Title: The Knife and the Serpent
By: Tim Pratt
Publisher: Angry Robot
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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