Review of “Hounds of Gaia” by Sean Tirman

Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

Hounds of Gaia is an action-packed and thrilling sci-fi/space-faring novel by Sean Tirman! The book follows a cybernetically-enhanced bounty-hunter, a wanted fugitive, and a conflicted nun as they navigate the violent and oppressive theocracy led by the enigmatic Mother of the Divine Church of the Omniphage.

This is one of those books, like Son of the Doomsday Prophet, in which you (the reader) need to be patient and let things develop.

This is a really good example of why you should read beyond the first 100 pages of a book! When this book gets going (maybe 200 or so pages in), it really gets going!

Hounds of Gaia features an ensemble cast of colorful, charismatic, and compelling characters. The central protagonist, the aptly-named Foxhound (wait, like from Metal Gear?), is a mercenary-for-hire and bounty hunter who is known throughout the solar system for having taken down some of the most vile, despicable, dangerous, and wanted fugitives this side of the Kuiper Belt.

Some of Foxhound's captures (and some of the villains of the novel) include:
Warrick Kano- “The Savage of Europa”
Hecate Neumar- “The Widow of Venus”
Eris Enyo- “The Blood Queen of Titan”
And Bora Volkan... the Something or Other.

So, like, what was Bora's cool nickname again? Did he have one?

Anyway, Bora is a brilliant scientist known to have cured many people, but his time in this violent, corrupt, and oppressive society has done a number on his humanity (and sanity).

It turns out that one of Foxhound's newly acquired prisoners, Phineas “Fink” Ames, who knows Bora, turns out to be the deuteragonist of the novel.

When we're first introduced to Fink, he seems like he fits right in there with the “worst of the worst” criminals, having just been busted for human trafficking. He apparently attempted to sell a child to an undercover cop, blowing up the cop's operation. However, Fink has far deeper and further-reaching ambitions than these black market dealings, being known as a rebel and a rabble-rouser who has caused trouble for multiple authoritarian organizations throughout the solar system.

This is going to come across as a strange and perhaps inappropriate comparison given Fink's... occupation... but Fink reminded us a lot of Han Solo from Star Wars, who was also a space-faring rebel and smuggler with a ton of charisma.

Fink's mission appears to be to cause a mass-prison break aboard Foxhound's starship, The Tardigrade, sending a middle finger to the administration while also acquiring the ship itself.

A lot of this book is one big, huge cat-and-mouse chase between Foxhound and Fink with plot-threads including Sister Penelope's arc, Mother's manipulation, and the involvement of the dangerous aforementioned criminals woven in.

Sister Penelope serves as the tritagonist of the novel, a heavily-indoctrinated nun of the Divine Church of the Omniphage who gradually begins to see the cracks in the dogmatic doctrines promoted by Mother and her followers like Brother Loch.

And about this Divine Church of the Omniphage... what's really interesting about it is that, from what we gathered, it didn't necessarily start off as a cult or even a religion. It seems to have originated from a scientific subculture-turned-culture called Organic Humanism. Therefore, the leaders of the solar population are actually known as Organic Humanists. Ultimately, this cult-like religion actually started off as a science! These wackos once called themselves scientists! It's an interesting juxtaposition from the common way of thinking.

Mother is an incredibly imposing and intimidating villain, even more so than the other superpowered or cybernically-enhanced characters. Mother, the third clone of the matriarchal scientist known as Dr. Sage Odessa, exists both as a physical being and as an idea, a concept—a kind of goddess to replace the gods of old. It is so interesting to think of how science could become its own kind of religion and how a scientist who once meant well could become her own kind of goddess. It's a sobering thought.

There are other interesting ideas in this book like how some of the space colonies work. For example, water is mined on Ganymede. Orbital colonies operate a bit like a Dyson sphere, generating their own gravity via rotation.

However, the thing that really excited (and terrified) us were the enhancements that some of the characters have and technologies like the robots. For example, Eris Enyo “The Blood Queen of Titan” weighs about 500 pounds because many of her body-parts were genetically-engineered, grown in a lab to be perfectly suited for performance. In other words, she is a powerhouse in this book. Foxhound has some enhancements of her own that allow her to contend with these threats. She is also joined by her robot assistant/enforcer/sidekick, M.A.I.L.M.A.N., who is a powerhouse in his own right.

This is a really interesting book that had a slow start, but when the action got going, it really got going!

Check it out on Amazon!