The Light in Exile by Cheryl J. Franklin
Centuries ago, hubris cost the ancient alien race known as the adraki their most precious treasure. Wild with rage and pain, they scour the universe, jealously destroying anything that reminds them of what they lost.
Meanwhile, a group of humans inhabit the previously uninhabitable world of Siatha. They brought with them plants and animals, dedicated to creating an agricultural paradise where they can live simply, outside the intrigue and chaos of the highly technical and political world where Network and Consortium struggle for dominance. There they found what they sought—and much more.
The head of Network is strangely interested in this undeveloped Siatha and sends his most sophisticated agent to join these agrarian folks, his motives as vague as his goals…
The Light In Exile, like many of the other sci-fi novels I’ve read for ForFemFan, has a heavy dash of fantasy mixed in with its hard sci-fi core. This is in technical writing as well as tone. Both the characters and the world are valued for more than their relationship to the plot, even as chapters exist that are boiled down to nothing but hard sci-fi elements such as political posturing and technical explanations.
The technical writing is, as far as I can tell, faultless. Even with a mashup of a prologue, first-person narrative, third-person point-of-view, transcripts of books and personal logs, and quite a few POV characters, nothing feels amiss. Characterization unfurls naturally and I feel like I understand both the Siathans and the sophisticated agent simply by watching them live authentically in their worlds.
The over-arching plot doesn’t often interject itself on the day-to-day of our protagonists, but the absolutely perfect prologue clearly paints the stakes so that the adraki’s loss is never entirely out of your mind. And while the more local plot is both less dramatic and less clear than the overarching plot, it ties together all of these other elements so well that its somewhat looseness feels like an intentional choice to allow you to spend a little time feeling the weight of every other carefully crafted part of the story. At no point did I feel spoon-fed or marched forcibly along.
I’m also impressed with how well Cheryl J. Franklin wrote utterly believable characters and made me care about them so much. I’ve said it before: I’m a sucker for unrealistically charismatic and larger-than-life characters. It’s not a requirement for me to enjoy a book, but damn if it doesn’t help. The Siathans, on the other hand, couldn’t be more home-spun, and the agent’s job is to blend in. And yet the depth of their inner world made them plenty interesting without needing to resort to the sort of theatrics that normally captivate me.
If you’re good at reading between lines (I’m not), you might feel a “but” coming, and you’d be right.
The Light in Exile does employ a rather languid approach to storytelling. Even though I genuinely enjoyed it, at no point was I particularly hungry to read more. It was, in fact, the perfect before-bed novel: I’d read 10 – 30 pages, then easily set it aside, content with picking it back up again later.
It’s also the sort of book you could read slightly buzzed from a Manhattan while also slightly overwhelmed from traveling for your new job while also, being a proper software engineer, looking slightly frumpy/unconventional and getting weird looks while eating at the bar of an expensive Italian restaurant.
Ooor, the sort of book you could read slightly buzzed from a spicy margarita while also slightly overwhelmed from traveling for your new job while also, being a proper software engineer, looking slightly frumpy/unconventional and looking perfectly at home while eating at the bar of an inexpensive taco place.
Basically, The Light in Exile is an easy (in the good way) read because it never feels like “too much” or overly takes over your brain.
This is in part because of the emphasis on characterization. Unless it’s in some sort of psychological thriller, characterization is never going to be as addictive as trying to figure out what the next piece of the puzzle that is the plot is going to be. This is further compounded by a flashback that lasts for chapters that I don’t think is entirely necessary. This flashback mostly helps you understand a protagonists’ history and, thus, motivations, a feat I think Franklin accomplishes perfectly well in her non-flashback chapters. In the same vein, though, I’m thrilled to read a book that errs on the side of detailed characterization. And real characterization, too, not first-person grandstanding for the benefit of the reader.
On the flip side of this languidness is an ending that feels a touch rushed. Some aspects of it I think simply have to be rushed—anything else would feel unnatural. I mean, when shit hits the fan in real life, doesn’t it feel rushed? Other aspects of it, though, I think could be teased apart just a little bit more. And if book-length was an issue, well, I feel like a good chunk of that flashback could be reappropriated to the cause.
That said, the ending is by no means bad. Endings are haaaaard and most books are terrible at them, but The Light in Exile escapes this common fate. The ending might not be perfectly paced, but it matches the tone of the rest of the book, meets expectations given the sort of promises the book underwrites into its plot/characters, and has enough weight to feel like the ending of a novel.
This last point is especially important, given this is the first book in a series. Franklin could have easily ended The Light in Exile on some sort of catch to propel you into the next book, but she did us a solid and made the book stand alone, allowing her evident skill and well-crafted book alone tempt you into the next book in the series.
Which worked. I’ve placed an order for the remaining books in the series, and I’m quite looking forward into seeing where she continues to lead me.
Also, check out the last book on that list in the back of The Light in Exile. I loved The Gate of Ivory! I’m thinking late 80s, early 90s DAW books might be my jam.
Cover art by Richard Hescox:
