This superb third entry in Atrium’s Tribal Wars series showcases the author’s great strengths. As always, Atrium builds worlds and cultures with anthropological rigor—in this case, the Earth-colonized planet of Dolvia, where local tribes clash and are increasingly bold in challenging the power of the Consortium and the Company—and tour-guides readers through those creations with such exacting prose and immersive detail that the textures of life and conflict come to feel real. Atrium populates these new realms with compelling, all-too-human characters, especially women and outsiders, trying to do the right thing despite the tangled mess of politics and power. The result is heartening, humane, often exhilarating, even as Atrium’s cast faces grief, revolution, vicious violence, censorious media bosses, and above all else the challenge of respectful connection.

The sprawling plot of Home Rule, like the other Tribal Wars novels, is too densely populated with invented proper nouns to offer a simple thumbnail summary, but as Dolvia reels from the death of a tribal leader—and the money-minded rule of a Consortium-backed stooge in the planet’s largest city—the themes binding the story’s disparate perspective characters are clear and urgent. Here’s a novel of colonialism where the protagonists strive not to oppress, where one protagonist’s heroism isn’t acts of violence but of the sharing of knowledge: Jessup must train a tribal woman from the desert in the art of scuba diving.

Other story threads involve ongoing war between tribes, the self-immolation of women protesters, much ado about weddings and pregnancies, and a photojournalist’s efforts to report the truth about what the planet’s tribes are facing. His idea for an ad to help his startup captures the fears and practical needs of any good foreign correspondent as well as the first Tribal Wars novel captured that of field medics: “Help wanted: Dolviets who write in three dialects and don’t judge me.” Atrium’s worlds compel both in their alien detail—and what they reveal about our own. The glossary helps, but the storytelling’s inviting, despite its complexity.

Takeaway: First-rate SF novel of revolution, oppression, and the urgent textures of life.

Comparable Titles: Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos: Archives series, Joanna Russ.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A