or two millennia the world has been swept by the Call, a hypnotic trance that drives every large animal mindlessly toward the oceans to die. Survival has been possible only in isolated Callhavens, where the Call passes through once every few days. But in refuges like Mounthaven, civilization meets another check. Sentinel satellites, relics of a long-ago war, fry all moving vehicles over thirty feet and stanch all electrical essence. Mounthaven is poor in resources, so it can't afford the destruction of traditional wars; instead, its small states honor a strict, centuries-old chivalric code involving air duels fought with small, light aircraft.
When Bartolica suddenly attacks Yarron, not with a glove of challenge but with a swarm of pillaging mercenaries, the Yarronese nobility is too shocked even to mount a defense, and other states scarcely believe the tales of atrocities. Not until Yarron is half overrun does it find itself willing to cast aside cherished chivalry in order to save its own life.
Now Yarron fights back with fury. Its new breed of "air carbineers," led by superstitious Serjon and controversial aviatrix Bronlar, become startlingly successful. Neither nation realizes that many Bartolican aircraft losses are due not to Yarronese daring but to outright theft by a hidden third party.
Unlike fairies and goblins, Callwalkers--humans resistant to the Call--really exist. (They're named aviads because they're the product of a long-ago genetic experiment harnessing the immunity of birds.) Malevolent aviads are manipulating the war to siphon off Mounthaven aircraft. They plan to use these stolen planes to attack the oceangoing creatures that create the Call; such an attack would provoke the creatures into intensifying the Call and saturating the Callhavens. Only a handful of friendly aviads, joined with Yarron's passionate courage, bar the conquest of all humanity.
War, love and betrayal
The Miocene Arrow has all the elements of a rich, engrossing novel.
It's all in there, somewhere. The elaborate landscape of opulent 40th-century kingdoms circumscribed by relics of ancient wars and infiltrated by Callwalkers with disparate agendas--and the kernel story of how it all came about--are engaging and original. The war between Bartolica and Yarron is told in vivid and colorful detail, communicating the stark horrors, class conflict, bitterness, and wrenching dissonance caused by the abandonment of chivalry. The circularity of the reemergence of destructive war, which once led to the circumstances in which Mounthaven came about, is profound. There are a number of intriguing characters, including an aviad rake named Glasken and an inspired, salty monarch named Sartov. And there's Serjon and Bronlar's complicated love story too, in which a young flyer is forced to come of age and a young woman's innocence is tarnished by war and betrayal.
Where it comes up short is in how these elements are bound together. The more plot threads there are, the more important it is to keep them firmly in hand and drive them all inexorably toward the climax; yet here some of the threads are limp, and not all of them have much to do with what happens at the end of the story. At the very center of the novel is a fascinating, Day of the Triffids-esque narrative of a 21st-century eyewitness to the birth of the Call, the Sentinels, and other features of 40th-century life. Characteristically, this story is told to a character who has only a marginal impact on the outcome of the story.
This single flaw should not obscure the effort that Sean McMullen, an award-winning Australian author, put into realizing this unusual Earth and filling in its details. The Miocene Arrow tells an arresting and embroidered tale, especially for those interested in the give and take of futuristic wars.
