Uptown Oracle Reads… Seven Devils | A Outstanding Feminist Space Crew Ready to Save the Galaxy

Seven Devils
Laura Lam & Elizabeth May

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When Eris faked her death, she thought she had left her old life as the heir to the galaxy’s most ruthless empire behind. But her recruitment by the Novantaen Resistance, an organization opposed to the empire’s voracious expansion, throws her right back into the fray.

Eris has been assigned a new mission: to infiltrate a spaceship ferrying deadly cargo and return the intelligence gathered to the Resistance. But her partner for the mission, mechanic and hotshot pilot Cloelia, bears an old grudge against Eris, making an already difficult infiltration even more complicated.

When they find the ship, they discover more than they bargained for: three fugitives with firsthand knowledge of the corrupt empire’s inner workings.

Together, these women possess the knowledge and capabilities to bring the empire to its knees. But the clock is ticking: the new heir to the empire plans to disrupt a peace summit with the only remaining alien empire, ensuring the empire’s continued expansion. If they can find a way to stop him, they will save the galaxy. If they can’t, millions may die

I wanted to reach Seven Devils for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, I loved Elizabeth May‘s The Falconer and wanted to see what her writing sci-fi was like. I’ve not read any of Laura Lam‘s work before, but I’m still excited to see what the two writer set up was like. Then I was genuinely interested by the beautiful cover and the blurb.

Seven Devils has brilliant sci-fi world building. It’s set in the far future when humans have colonised other planets to make up the resources they don’t have. There’s AIs, aliens, space travel and even the next evolution of humans. We’re given history of lack of resources, wars, mass genocide of humans colonising and getting rid of aliens. Plus, there’s a religion of gods which are followed which gives additional backstory. On top of all this, the Tholosian empire is a society of humans that are programmed to do what the empire tells them to do – run by an AI.

It also brings a distinctive cast of character who all have different upbringings, but must work together to save the day. We’re shown both past and present chapters, so we see first hand the backstory of each character alongside their current actions. They’re also diverse with multiple LGBT characters, including a f/f relationship and a trans woman in leadership.

Seven Devils ends up having 7 main protaganists to mirror the title, where 5 of them have POV chapters. Some may find this too much, but once you get into the story and learn about each character it’s so easy to know who is who.

Firs up we have Eris, who has changed her name and face, so for the first part of the book you’re trying to guess who she really is (don’t worry they tell you pretty early on anyway!). Eris’ back story is entwined with Prince Damocles the antagonist, and also Xander, who is a character I wish we’d seen more of. She’s a strong character trying to make up for past mistakes whilst in the empire… by making more mistakes sometimes. The book centres on her a lot, but her story arc through Seven Devils was beautifully written, and I can’t wait to see what she does in the follow up book.

Clo highly contrasts Eris in a few different ways. Firstly, she was naturally born and raised as non-programmed in the kind of slums under the city Eris was brought up in. Secondly, Clo and Eris start off as conflicting forces who don’t like each other (we find out why in a backstory chapter) – and they need to get through that somehow to work together effectively. There’s a lot of anger, but they still clearly care for one another throughout the book, so the dynamic of them was very interesting to read.

Next up we have child genius, and brought up by The One, Ariadne. Her job assigned at birth was to be the person to help program and guide the AI to do better, but at the cost of her missing out on life. She’s the brains of the operation, and is the reason why Rhea and Nyx have escaped the Empire and are joining the rebels. She’s also the one that initiates the found family feeling of our cast as she missed out on social interaction growing up. Whilst she can be awkward, her heart is in the right place and the others all respond to this.

Rhea was a dancer for Prince Damocles before escaping the empire. She’s the least trained for combat, and she has the most empathy towards everyone they meet. Her story arc was the one that surprised me the most as I didn’t see it coming.

Then last but not least for our POV characters we have Nyx. Nyx was a trained and heavily programmed soldier and killer for the empire, and she holds all the guilt that goes along with that. Nyx and Eris are very similar in upbringing, and I enjoyed how both of them started to chip at the walls they’d built up.

We also meet Kyra who is a bad ass leader of the rebels, and is a trans woman. This showed that growing people in vats and programming really reduces any senses of self for the human race. Then there’s the hostage pilot Cato, who has his own struggles that he has to get through (that I hope we see more of in the next book!).

The free choice, or lack of free choice in the empire, conveys a lot of backstory to characters such as Kyra due to many trans people in real life being forced to not make the choice to be themselves. Then there’s Nyx and Cato who had been trained to kill and how this negatively impacted them once they realised what they’d done. The Tholosian empire forces you to be complicit in the dehumanisation of others.

Then there’s the overall theme of lack of self control as The One controls everyone unless you’re one of the few born natural (or deprogrammed…). People are “born” in vats and brought up for specific jobs from birth, with no choices to be had. This lack of free will also means no personalities, no humanity, and even no evolution of humans as they’re not adapting to survive.

On top of the AI, propaganda and religion is used to reduce consequences to actions, for example, needless murder is justified as a sacrifice to the God of Death. The name Seven Devils parallels the 7 gods in this world, as the gods encompass more devil-ish nature of sins. This is further paralleled in the 7 main characters who are good, but have sinned in different ways.

My only hesitancy to read the book was that the beginning felt a bit slow. There’s a lot of info packed into the first half of the book, which does lead us to bigger mysteries and a great plotline. However I could see people putting down the book before getting to the good stuff and missing out.

Overall I loved Sevin Devils and enjoyed the characters as well as the brilliant world building, I’m excited to find out what happens to our characters in the second book in the duology!

Positives of Seven Devils

• Character depth and backstories, create diverse and interesting cast.
• World building is expansive, whilst not being too much for a duology.

Negatives of Seven Devils

• Slow build up.

I received Seven Devils by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May from the publisher, Gollancz. This is an unbiased and honest review