Fiction Analysis - 'Faith and Empire' by Carlos Carrasco
'Starship Troopers' with Catholic flavors.
Author’s note: Welcome to the first of what I hope will be a series of reviews in this Substack for various works of fiction. Here, I will be putting in an in-depth look at the work in question. Here, I am only going to put up works that I like, hence me calling it an analysis rather than a review. There will be no hate watching in this house.
Warning: I’ll be as sparse with the spoilers as I can, but it’ll be there.
Introduction
I learned of this book’s existence from JD Sauvage who reviewed it not too long ago. To summarize, he didn’t really find it to his liking; though he admitted that it was more on his part rather than on the author’s.
As for me, I have the opposite feeling. Let me tell you straight up that I love this book. Love it. Love it. Love it! I finished it in two days, and I probably would have finished it in one if I didn’t have to go to bed.
But I’m sure you’re not here to hear me gush about this book so I’ll move on.
Faith and Empire by Carlos Carrasco is to be the first of a series known as the Holy Terran Empire, God Willing. So how does it stack up as the first book a series? It’s interesting in a good way; it’s not like most of the novels that I’ve read before. The closest equivalent I can think of is Robert A. Heinlein’s classic military sci-fi novel Starship Troopers.
Admittedly, it’s been a while since I read Starship Troopers so my recollection of it is a little spotty. But it was the first science fiction novel that I ever completed, so I know much of that book by heart. Keep that in mind because I’ll be making that comparison from time to time.
The writing is very lovingly detailed. If you love description of military technology and battles, you will love it. Again, it’s just like Starship Troopers.
Int this analysis, I will focus on three aspects of the book: characters, setting, and story.
Characters
Zephyrinus ‘Zeph’ Zapatas is our protagonist in this tale. In many ways, he reminds me of Juan ‘Johnnie’ Rico from Starship Troopers (I hope you’re not tired of that comparison yet). Hispanic-esque name? Check. Going by a diminutive? Check. Everyman protagonist? Check. Wanted to serve in the military and ended up becoming a space marine? Check.
But calling Zeph a carbon copy of Johnnie would be a great disservice to his character. For one thing, Zeph is a son of the Church through and through. One thing that distinguishes the Imperial Marines from the Mobile Infantry is that the former required a vow of celibacy. As you might expect, that didn’t go down well with his girlfriend Jacinta.
By and large, Zeph carried the story from start to finish. The readers should expect this since the story is told from a first-person perspective.
But there are other characters worth noting such as Izzy, Zeph’s best friend in the corps who was known for his big appetite owing to his abhuman ancestry. Izzy serves as the comic relief character. There’s also Zeph’s aforementioned girlfriend Jacinta; their courtship is rather wholesome though ultimately melancholic.
The supporting characters of Faith and Empire are not what the sophisticates would call ‘deep’. But that’s a good thing; it keeps the story around our hero Zeph, and it keeps the writing crisp.
Setting and Worldbuilding
Moving on to the setting and themes of the book. Faith and Empire took place in the 51st century. Like many science fiction settings, it has a long-collapsed precursor empire in the past known as the Dominion of Man. But Carrasco put a great twist on it where the current Holy Terran Empire isn’t some entity that arose after the collapse of the Dominion. Rather, the Dominion was defeated in a war with the Holy League Worlds. This set the stage for the collapse of the Dominion. Meanwhile, the Holy Terran Empire is the successor state of the aforementioned Holy League.
As you can tell, Carrasco’s universe is a very optimistic view of the future. This is something that you don’t see very often with contemporary Catholics.
If you want to know more about the world of the Holy Terran Empire, just read the book. The good news is that you’ll get all that I’ve described to you within the first chapter.
That’s one thing I can’t get enough of this book, it doesn’t waste your time. The whole book is only 121 pages (according to Amazon), and you’ll get thrown into the action rather quickly. It’s the power of direct exposition.
But the book’s short length doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have worldbuilding. It certainly does, but it’s not done in a way that’s tedious to go through. It gives you enough to be satisfied, but not too much that you’ll be wanting more.
As a side note, when I commented on Mr. Sauvage’s review of the book, I compared the setting of this book to the Galactic Christendom in Reavers of the Void by Bradford C. Walker. Having finally read this book for myself I must say that my assessment is a little off. Walker’s work is more like Star Wars while Carrasco’s is more like (wait for it) Starship Troopers. The former is space opera, the latter is military sci-fi.
The Story
And now we go to the story. The story starts as Zeph and his comrades is about to invade a system full of space pirates. This isn’t the epic space opera many might hope for, but it’s fitting given that the protagonist of the story is just a marine. Zeph isn’t the Emperor, a Prince, or in any way privy to the things that the higher ups in the Holy Terran Empire would know. He’s just a marine.
Perhaps that might change in the sequels, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Suppressing space pirates was no walk in the park though. Zeph lost many comrades to nukes, lasers, and many other dangers. Despite their name, the Imperial Marines are no Astartes. They are very much mortal men.
One part of the story that readers might get caught off guard is how the conflict was resolved relatively quickly in terms of the book. The denouement pretty much started about 2/3rds in; a little strange. I like it but I can understand if people find that off-putting.
At some point, the book also shifted gears towards Zeph’s life before he joined the Imperial Marines. Here, we learned of our hero’s home, family, friends, and loved ones.
This is where Carrasco’s work differs the most from Heinlein’s. As I remember it, Starship Troopers started the book in medias res with the action but spent much of the early parts covering Johnnie’s backstory and how he ended up getting into Mobile Infantry. Meanwhile, Faith and Empire threw the readers into the mix immediately. And then, once the action was finished then we get to learn about Zeph’s character and backstory.
It was an interesting gambit by the author, did it work? I think it did. Origin stories in modern fiction are infamous. Carrasco was able to avoid the problem of “tedious origin story” by starting the action very quickly.
In the beginning, we only know two things about Zeph’s personality: he’s a faithful Catholic and he’s fearful of going into his first combat mission. As the story goes, we learn more about him. He even grows throughout the story (though I only noticed it after the fact, it’s a blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing). This culminated in the final part of the book which delved into our hero’s past.
Imagine if Zeph’s backstory was put in the beginning of the book instead of the end. First of all, it would be tedious to the max. More importantly, we wouldn’t care since we haven’t seen Zeph going through the valley of the shadow of death yet.
Conclusion
Faith and Empire is a solid work by Carrasco. The characters played their roles well. The setting is interesting with the worldbuilding being enough to whet your appetite but not too much that it becomes tedious. Finally, the story structure is an interesting experiment which I believe paid off.
After the book, there is also a teaser for the sequel. Remember when I said earlier that this series is more military sci-fi rather than space opera? The teaser seemed to prove my hypothesis as we see Zeph and his comrades suppressing the 51st century’s equivalent of Antifa (not to get too political about it). Not exactly the big intergalactic war of nations or that epic battle that decides the fate of the galaxy.
But I might be proven wrong.
In any case, go read the book. It’s really good.
-Michael P. Marpaung
Good review, cheers!