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Banner Of Souls by Liz Williams
01/01/2005 . Source: Andy Stout 
pub: Bantam Spectra. 426 page paperback. Price: $6.99 (US), $10.99 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-58676-9. pub: TOR. 426 page enlarged paperback. Price: £12.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-4050-4124-2. TOR-UK release: 18 February 2005. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.toruk.com and www.bantamdell.com
'Banner Of Souls' is a strange book and no mistake. Set in a very far future, male-free solar system, a child, Lunae, is created with the ability to shift through time. This means that not only has she a bit of a destiny to fulfil, but that forces will be arraigned against her to stop her at all costs. On one side of the protagonists therefore you have her guardian and protector, the Martian warrior Dreams-of-War, who is trying her damnedest to keep Lunae preserved from harm. On the other, you have the mysterious planet at the edge of the solar system, Nightshade, and its operative Yskatarina Iye, which wants to see Lunae dead as soon as conceivably possible.
 
Why? Well, that's all tied into haunt-tech, a strange technology that Nightshade gifted to the solar system a century or so before and which powers inanimate objects with the spirits of the long-departed. Thus Dreams-of-War's armour is sentient and, given the right circumstances, can assume the persona of its original owner. Which comes in handy on several occasions as she fends off various attacks on her charge.
Apart from Yskatarina's constant companion, the vaguely insectoid Animus, and various 'man remnants' hunted and slain by the Martian warrior clans, there are no males in this story as they've all been done away with centuries ago. Which is fine but Williams never really explores the issue, leaving you thinking that it is there to establish vague feminist credentials for the novel and nothing else. But then Williams almost makes a vice of vagueness, sketching the brief outlines of entire histories and cultures and then never really getting round to inking them in. Names, locations, concepts and technologies all flash past with a brief name-check and then they're gone, almost as if the reader is assumed to be living in the same milieu as the book is set and will understand instinctively what Williams is on about. The end result is a bit vertigo-inducing, especially given that we're all so far temporally from home and anything we recognise.
It's a shame because there's some very interesting stuff going on within this novel, it's just a frustrating job getting to it. Stick with it and it's rewarding. Some of the characters even turn out to be likeable after a couple of hundred pages. Casual readers though might want to look elsewhere.
Andy Stout
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