Twenty five years have passed since the events of the Tao trilogy, but that is only a moment in the centuries-long alien civil war raging on earth between the Prophus (Betrayers) and the Genjix. What has changed is that human beings now know that Quasing exist and live symbiotic relationships with their hosts. The situation remains precarious for the Prophus, particularly with the Genjix moving in on India, one of the few remaining unaligned countries. One of the zones of activity is a curious piece of construction that the Genjix are working hard to hide, a facility in a slum called Crate Town in Gujarat near the border with Pakistan.
Investigation of the facility and personal vengeance lead Io’s host, Emily, to Crate Town where she is killed. Released from the dead body, Io rejects occupying the designated second and instead joins with Ella, a con-artist resident of Crate Town who had leaped to defend Emily. What unfolds is a small story contained to the goings on with this particular facility, but with deadly consequences for everyone involved.
As usual with Chu’s work, The Rise of Io, features intrigue and plenty of martial art’s action, but it was the mix of character conflicts that made it excellent. The surface level conflict is the ongoing investigation and infiltration of the Genjix facility, but it was the additional conflicts that made it special.
First, there is the tension between Ella and Io. Unlike the relationship between Roen and Tao in the original series, Ella is adamantly opposed to Io, considering the Quasing an unwelcome intruder–and the Prophus a possible source of revenue, at best. This is not because Ella is bad. In fact, she is well liked and willing to put herself at risk to do the right thing. Ella is simply unused to partnership since her father left and her mother was killed by the Genjix in the war, and she is therefore slow to trust. Despite the potential advantages of human-Quasing partnerships that have been revealed elsewhere in this series, Ella never comes to trust Io.
Second, on the other side of the equation, is Shura, a Genjix assassin deprived of her family’s inheritance. Shura is ruthless, but entirely at the whims of Genjix hierarchy, and dispatched to India to oversee this vital construction project under the supervision of her mortal enemy Rurik.
Finally, there is the conflict between Io and the rest of the Quasing. In the current conflict, Io is low-ranking, unskilled at manipulating humans, and most notable for catastrophic failures. But that was not always the case. Once, Io ranked among the most influential of all Quasing, and this change has made Io bitter and dissatisfied with the current arrangement. The problem, however, is that Quasing cannot live without humans, leaving Ella in the middle.
The Rise of Io is an excellent self-contained story that begins and ends in media res, more or less. Nothing is really resolved in the book, and while it can be read as a standalone novel, it builds on expectations and assumptions for the world that are created in the Tao trilogy. In sum, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but the character conflicts, particularly those involving Io, will be more meaningful with that background.
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I am now reading Charles Mann’s 1493, a global history of the world created by the Columbian exchange. So far it is an interesting read about the emergence of what he calls the “homogenocene” era of the globalized world.
Noodlings 