Carnival

I didn't appreciate how well Elizabeth Bear built her far future world until I attempted to open this review with an explanation of that world. My efforts were going to be long-winded and quickly bogged down in details. What Bear reveals through character introductions, interactions, and minimal info dumps, I could struggle through hundred of words trying to lay out in a coherent fashion. I'll just say that in the far future, facing several ecological crises, the people of earth make some bad choices. Chief among those is creating an AI known as The Governors that can dispassionately deal with the situation. The Governors proceed to reduce most human life in the northern hemisphere to its organic compounds. When the Governors announce that another culling is imminent, there is a scramble to get off planet. Colonization of other worlds had already begun, and what we have by the time Carnival begins is a group of Coalition planets still aligned with Old Earth and the Governors, and some renegade planets settled by those who left earth in the general diaspora after the first culling and found worlds out of the control of their Earth ancestors.

New Amazonia is one of those renegade planets, a matriarchy where stud males, who have proved themselves in combat trials, are kept licensed for reproductive purposes. Gentle males work as servants and other menial jobs. The women, who have found a planet deserted by its dominant species but well equipped to serve their needs with an endless energy source and a city that may be an enormous AI construct, live a pretty sweet life. But they do go around packing pistols and, they are as touchy about their honor as any gentleman of the Antebellum American South. Duels are frowned on but frequent.

The story begins with the arrival of Vincent Katherinessen, a diplomat from the coalition planets, and his body guard Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi-Jones. The men have been lovers in the past and they will be again by their first night in New Amazonia. But Michelangelo is a Liar, a role always capitalized as though it is some official governmental, or anti-governmental post. And from here on out, Bear piles on the intrigues, shifting loyalties, insurrectionist groups, and factions in a way that over-complicates the plot without ever engaging the reader -- or at any rate, this reader -- in what is going on. Vincent's and Michelangelo's mission is to repatriate great works of art by women artists, and work out a deal to tap into whatever mysterious energy source powers New Amazonia. There are attempted assassinations, abductions, and duel challenges, but none of it amounts to much, especially since the real power lies with what turns out to be the not-so-absent original inhabitants of the planet.