The Sardonyx net

This is a book that wants the reader to sympathize with its monsters. It mostly succeeds, and mostly plays fair. I'm not quite sure what to think of this.

The Sardonyx Net takes place on the planet Chabad, a planet with an economy dependent on slavery. It focuses on the household of the family in charge of supply slaves for the entire planet, Rhani Yago, and her brother, Zed. On Chabad, slavery is enforced by drugging the slaves, but Chabad doesn't manufacture or control the drug, and the interplanetary police force, although it tolerates Chabad's slavery, does not tolerate the import of the drug.

The monsters in this book are the slaveholders. Rhani is a generous woman who prefers that her slaves see her as a benign mistress. However, Zed is a sexual sadist who uses slaves to fulfil his urges. Rhani knows this, and while she takes some steps to minimize his access to slaves she wants use from, she accepts his predations as to some degree inevitable.

Zed himself manages to be a complex character; he's in love with his sister, but unwilling to inflict his sexuality on her. (Intra-generational incest is not taboo, on Chabad, so his choice is more meaningful than it might otherwise be.) He only hurts slaves who (he feels) deserve punishment, and chooses to focus on slaves as an outlet, so he can avoid hurting innocents. He knows he's a monster, and tries to channel it.

And the slaves themselves are not, entirely, innocent: slavery on Chabad is based on convict labour, and once a convict serves their term, they are freed. Chabad empties the prisons of neighbouring worlds to meet its labour needs.

The story is mostly told from the point of view of Rhani Yago's newest slave, and Zed's latest victim, Dana Ikoro. Dana himself is an interesting character, convicted as a drug runner who was involved in the trade to keep Chabad supplied with Dorazine, the drug that keeps slavery on Chabad economically feasible. Once he's exposed to slavery, first hand, as it were, he discovers moral objections, which are no less sincere for being very self-interested. He sympathizes with Rhani, and despises her, hates his slavery, and yet seems to accept its argued 'necessity,' at least for Chabad's economy.

By itself, this would be a little easier to take, except that the book also provides an anti-slavery voice in the place of Michel A-Rae, a fanatical anti-slavery crusader, and chief of the Hyper-police in Chabad's sector. A-Rae is against slavery because, the book tells us, he was denied a position on the slave-trading ship which Zed came to command, and because he shares Zed's sadistic tendencies, but not his outlet. As a result, his oppostion to slavery is entirely the result of a twisted desire for revenge, and he doesn't care how many slaves are injured or killed in his quest to dismantle the institution.

A-Rae seems to function to make the Yago siblings seem less monstrous by comparison, and I object to that. It's facile, it's cheating, and it makes me feel like the author expected me to let her get away with it.

I really don't know how I feel about this book. It doen't take a clear moral stance, and remains ambiguous on moral points I would have thought were relatively clear. I don't require my books to be “moral,” but really, was a sympathetic exploration of slavers and torturers something I wanted?

A note: I began reading this book and thought, “Well this is rather boring,” so I skipped ahead a few pages to see if it got more interesting. It abruptly became quite interesting, so I backtracked to find the start of the interesting bits. Turns out, you need to get about to the middle of the second chapter to find out if you're interested or not.