Review by Zachary Forbes
September 2nd, 2024
These posts are just our opinions of the books we read, and don't yet reflect the decision of our judging team or the progression of the book in the SFINCS competition.
Summary:
Langston Wheeler has everything going for him. He's a promising student, near universally recognized by his peers and his mentors as a model citizen amongst the telepaths. His grades, his sparring performance, and his knowledge of telepathy are all exceptional for his age. A future amongst the best of the Gentle Hand is all-but-guaranteed. He will be assigned a marriage and grow to become a legend.
But returning to the Yard for his final stretch of classes, he soon discovers two things: an unrelenting chemistry with a woman known as Cleo Sable, and a dead classmate.
Cleo Sable is the weapons professor. She is a legend in her own right, and carries with her more experience than most other teachers in the Yard. She is also fawned after by all the other male students, whose time around the opposite sex is kept restricted to prevent unwanted romantic connections and the sporadic population growth that could follow.
Sable is thus the obvious choice for help when Langston is unable to trace the murder of his classmate. He stumbles on her when he visits the gym to train one night, and he convinces her to work with him on the case. He also charms her into a sparring match, and both of them become enthralled with one another.
They soon discover there's more under the surface of this murder case, and it has to do with a long-forbidden telepathic ability that most people in the Yard would have no experience with. Sable fills Langston in on the powers that could be at play, and their mutual experience draws them closer. Their reputations walk on a razor's edge as they risk their time spent together being noticed. But the adrenaline of it all is too much to keep away from.
The Good:
Fair warning, it is difficult for me to discuss the bones of this story without delving into spoilers.
For me, the best part of this story was the relationship between these two characters, Langston Wheeler and Cleo Sable, which always seemed destined to meet a tragic end. The rules of this world are sort of unbeatable, given the nature of telepathy, therefore no secrets can really be kept hidden forever. And that feeling of helplessness simmers in the background as the characters try (and fail) to beat down their human instincts. It's a testament to how humans experience emotional and sexual love in the real world. Those feelings that we know to be true seep into this science fiction setting where such things are outlawed, and even against those unsurmountable odds those feelings still dominate our decisions.
The world itself is also very clearly thought-out. I have not read the rest of Bowen's Exile War series (though I am likely to now) so I know there's plenty of context missing. But it does help the story to exist in a place which has already been mapped out and justified, rather than having to map those things out along the way. This is a story playing out in a place that already exists. And it feels like you can tell what's coming in the grander story beyond this novella even without reading the other books.
Piggybacking off of that point, the last thing I'll praise is the arc for our protagonist. I did not come into this story knowing where he would end up, but I was deeply satisfied with how his path as a character played out. There's clearly a rich story with Langston that this novella properly sets the stage for. His near perfect status unwinding to the tune of his one fatal flaw is a classic character journey that only makes me empathize with him more.
The Bad:
As I said before, this novella properly sets the stage for a great story concept--a perfect student who lost everything to a very human mistake. But the other end of the blade, so to speak, is that the novella doesn't wrap itself up as nicely as most would like.
I am obviously a fan of the romantic subplot and the character journeys, but they do seem to take over the main plot of the story, which is sold at the beginning as the mystery of the classmate's murder. As a prequel or as a conjoined series, this sort of thing shouldn't be too much of a problem. It's clear the dark forces behind the mystery will be an important antagonist down the line, where they will either prevail or be thwarted. But it does leave a bit to be desired when the story ends in this book and the twist reveal you've been waiting for is more hinted at than explained.
Thus the existence of this story within a greater literary universe can be both a boost and a hinderance.
Overall:
Distant Thunder is a great read. There's a lot of humanity built into it, and the protagonist is well-constructed. It's also a great pitch for the subsequent series.
It is held back, however, not because it ends in tragedy, but because the perpetrators of that tragedy are bound to be faced further down the road, and thus have not been confronted to much of a degree in this story.
Four out of five stars.
Be sure to tune in to our Twitter/X @ZachForbesBro for new blog posts about the novellas we read for the SFINCS competition! And click through to our website if you want to see other projects my brother and I have been working on!
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