Moby Dick meets Duel in John Love''s debut novel of Space Opera and Military Science Fiction! Faith is the name humanity has given to the unknown, seemingly invincible alien ship that has begun to harass the newly emergent Commonwealth. 300 years earlier, the same ship destroyed the Sakhran Empire, allowing the Commonwealth to expand its sphere of influence. But now Faith has returned! The ship is as devastating as before, and its attacks leave some Commonwealth solar systems in chaos. Eventually it reaches Sakhra, now an important Commonwealth possession, and it seems like history is about to repeat itself. But this time, something is waiting: an Outsider, one of the Commonwealth''s ultimate warships. Slender silver ships, full of functionality and crewed by people of unusual abilities, often sociopaths or psychopaths, Outsiders were conceived in back alleys, built and launched in secret, and commissioned without ceremony. One system away from earth, the Outsider ship Charles Manson makes a stand. Commander Foord waits with his crew of miscreants and sociopath, hoping to accomplish what no other human has been able to do - to destroy Faith!
Faith
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Hyped as a cross between Moby-Dick and “Duel” (the Richard Matheson story in which an automobile driver is harassed by the driver of a big rig), this debut SF novel delivers the goods. Set in the far-flung future, the story involves a menacing alien spacecraft, called Faith by its victims, that systematically attacks inhabited star systems. Now it’s returning to the Sakhran system, 300 years after an attack that nearly wiped out an entire civilization, and one man, the commander of a human warship, is planning to take on the alien marauder in a battle to the death. The book closely resembles a military thriller—a daring commander tracking an enemy sub across the seas—but Love provides readers with plenty of SF color: aliens whose history seems drawn from ancient Eygptian influences, human warships named after psychopaths and crewed by dysfunctionals like the hero, Commander Foord of the warship Charles Manson, and other fun stuff. Love has a quirky style—a character’s eyes are “as warm and golden as urine”—and it seems virtually impossible to imagine an SF fan who won’t thoroughly enjoy the tale. --David Pitt
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More About the Author
John Love spent most of his working life in the music industry. He was Managing Director of PPL, the world's largest record industry copyright organisation. He also ran Ocean, a large music venue in Hackney, East London.
He lives just outside London in north-west Kent with his wife Sandra and cats (currently two, but there have been as many as six). Sandra and John have two grown-up children.
Apart from his family, London and cats, his favourite things include books and book collecting, cars and driving, football and Tottenham Hotspur, old movies and music. Science fiction books were among the first he can remember reading, and he thinks they will probably be among the last.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Well written, but meandering, illogical, and unpleasant, with a poor "profound" ending
July 11, 2012
Format:Paperback
Faith was a very well-written book with some very clever lines, turns of phrase, and at times an almost poetic, lyrical form of prose. It's pretty and the synopsis of the book provides in broad strokes exactly the kind of book that I'd normally love.
I didn't love Faith unfortunately. It devolved into being more about style than substance.
What hurts it is its tendency to meander and stall. The book glosses over matters of important world-building, background, character history, cultural elements, species details and such, making allusions to them that profoundly affect the choices made by the characters, but then the author is coy, not providing you the details to agree or disagree with those choices. The main character is apparently preternaturally clever and capable, even while acknowledging himself and his crew as unrepentant sociopaths, but the author just tells you he is clever and capable, insisting you accept it without any demonstration. He achieves near-victory in one battle with a set of low-tech missiles, but never provides you with the reason these missiles went undetected when other, more subtle attacks failed. He tells you the Outsider ships must fight alone, without once proving it is a necessity. It seems like the author is trying to take a shortcut to brilliance. He wants you to just accept the characters' profound skill and their brilliant deductive, intuitive leaps (on Faith one supposes), but he never takes us lesser mortal readers through the elements of those leaps. Even Sherlock Holmes showed Watson the path he took in his deductions. No such luck here.
Almost a fifth of the book is devoted to a stagecoach journey that the ship CO, Aaron Forde insists on completing, even though his resulting delay on the planet is causing civil unrest and will ultimately, inevitably cost lives. A reason for this insistence never reveals itself and the sequence is utterly unimportant to the plot. Characters are picked up and used to provide reactions to Forde, but have no impact on the plot and don't do more than re-tell what the author has already stated.
The science of the book is atrocious, illogical, and conforms itself to whatever the narrative needs, attempting to go the route of "so advanced it's magical" vice providing any explanation for the weapon or drive-system abilities. The author disregards inertia, conservation of energy, and any rational basis throughout the book. The enemy sometimes knows the future and demonstrates abilities utterly outside of conventional physics, and at other times is limited and virtually unaware. Several times, the book shows off ship capabilities that should end the battle in the next scene, only to never employ them again. At any time, the Faith vessel could have destroyed the Charles Manson, but it prefers to toy with them without consequence.
The ending is especially unsatisfying, virtually glossing over the final battle and the deaths of the only sympathetic characters and trying to wrestle out a grand meaning from the alien's presence, finally only providing oblique references to the Book of Srahr which apparently knew what the Faith was and what it meant all along. It purports that the truth of the Faith is enough to cause entire societies to shut themselves down and turn inward, but all it offers us is weak pop philosophy. No society would ever be shut down by revelations so trifling. It never pays off.
The characters are unpleasant and cryptic solely for the sake of appearing deep or mysterious for mystery's sake. Some mistake this for complex characterization. I'd refer to it as anti-characterization. These people are quirky, not well-written, well-explained, or well-rounded. They are not internally consistent either.
The universe is not well-constructed. The Faith, its presence, its reasons, and its capabilities are never adequately explained, not even in the final coda. The battles do not make sense, though they are described incessantly and in excessive, crawling detail (with the exception of the photon burst in the asteroid belt - I liked that, and perhaps the strike of the two special missiles).
If you are looking for average social or literary SF, perhaps the New Weird with space battles, this might be for you. If you are looking for good prose with a futuristic flare, this might be for you. Any fan of decent plotting, hard SF, military SF, space opera, or a fun read though will want to try it only as an exercise for what not to do.
I didn't love Faith unfortunately. It devolved into being more about style than substance.
What hurts it is its tendency to meander and stall. The book glosses over matters of important world-building, background, character history, cultural elements, species details and such, making allusions to them that profoundly affect the choices made by the characters, but then the author is coy, not providing you the details to agree or disagree with those choices. The main character is apparently preternaturally clever and capable, even while acknowledging himself and his crew as unrepentant sociopaths, but the author just tells you he is clever and capable, insisting you accept it without any demonstration. He achieves near-victory in one battle with a set of low-tech missiles, but never provides you with the reason these missiles went undetected when other, more subtle attacks failed. He tells you the Outsider ships must fight alone, without once proving it is a necessity. It seems like the author is trying to take a shortcut to brilliance. He wants you to just accept the characters' profound skill and their brilliant deductive, intuitive leaps (on Faith one supposes), but he never takes us lesser mortal readers through the elements of those leaps. Even Sherlock Holmes showed Watson the path he took in his deductions. No such luck here.
Almost a fifth of the book is devoted to a stagecoach journey that the ship CO, Aaron Forde insists on completing, even though his resulting delay on the planet is causing civil unrest and will ultimately, inevitably cost lives. A reason for this insistence never reveals itself and the sequence is utterly unimportant to the plot. Characters are picked up and used to provide reactions to Forde, but have no impact on the plot and don't do more than re-tell what the author has already stated.
The science of the book is atrocious, illogical, and conforms itself to whatever the narrative needs, attempting to go the route of "so advanced it's magical" vice providing any explanation for the weapon or drive-system abilities. The author disregards inertia, conservation of energy, and any rational basis throughout the book. The enemy sometimes knows the future and demonstrates abilities utterly outside of conventional physics, and at other times is limited and virtually unaware. Several times, the book shows off ship capabilities that should end the battle in the next scene, only to never employ them again. At any time, the Faith vessel could have destroyed the Charles Manson, but it prefers to toy with them without consequence.
The ending is especially unsatisfying, virtually glossing over the final battle and the deaths of the only sympathetic characters and trying to wrestle out a grand meaning from the alien's presence, finally only providing oblique references to the Book of Srahr which apparently knew what the Faith was and what it meant all along. It purports that the truth of the Faith is enough to cause entire societies to shut themselves down and turn inward, but all it offers us is weak pop philosophy. No society would ever be shut down by revelations so trifling. It never pays off.
The characters are unpleasant and cryptic solely for the sake of appearing deep or mysterious for mystery's sake. Some mistake this for complex characterization. I'd refer to it as anti-characterization. These people are quirky, not well-written, well-explained, or well-rounded. They are not internally consistent either.
The universe is not well-constructed. The Faith, its presence, its reasons, and its capabilities are never adequately explained, not even in the final coda. The battles do not make sense, though they are described incessantly and in excessive, crawling detail (with the exception of the photon burst in the asteroid belt - I liked that, and perhaps the strike of the two special missiles).
If you are looking for average social or literary SF, perhaps the New Weird with space battles, this might be for you. If you are looking for good prose with a futuristic flare, this might be for you. Any fan of decent plotting, hard SF, military SF, space opera, or a fun read though will want to try it only as an exercise for what not to do.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Three hundred years ago, a strange and seemingly invincible alien ship visited the Sakhran Empire. Exactly what happened is unclear, because the events were only recorded in the Book of Srahr, a text only Sakhrans are allowed to read. After the ship left, the Sakhran Empire went into a slow but irreversible decline.
Three centuries later, the Sakhrans have been assimilated into the larger interstellar empire known as the Commonwealth, when suddenly the strange, immensely powerful ship returns. The Commonwealth dispatches an Outsider, one of only nine in its ultimate class of warships, to stop this inscrutable enemy.
John Love's stunning debut novel Faith is the story of this confrontation.
The first two sections of Faith introduce two false protagonists in extreme, dangerous situations. In the hands of a lesser writer these chapters could have led to empty action scenes devoid of human interest, but John Love has the knack of making a character interesting and real in a paragraph or two. At the same time, these sections help the fictional universe take shape and set the stage for the real meat of the novel. Still, it's surprising when those characters disappear from view for the rest of the novel in favor of Aaron Foord, Faith's real main character.
Foord is the captain of the Charles Manson, the Outsider-class ship that will try to prevent the Commonwealth from going the way of the Sakhran Empire. Outsiders are the ultimate warships: sleek, sturdy, and so jam-packed with weapons and drives that their crews barely fit and end up living inside them like animals in burrows. Appropriately, the crews are outsiders themselves: sociopaths, psychopaths and various other miscreants who are immensely gifted but were, to put it mildly, not recruited for their people skills. Outsiders "were conceived in back alleys, built and launched in secret, and commissioned without ceremony."
Faith really gets going once we're on board the Charles Manson with Foord and his crew. As John Love describes it in his typically sparse, eloquent prose, the Charles Manson is "a ship crewed by people who had lost, or never had, the motives of people." Throughout the confrontation with the enemy ship, we get to know each of the four humans and two aliens on the bridge in intimate detail. At one point or another, we learn what brought each of them to this point. It's amazing that John Love manages to weave all of these narratives into what's essentially one long battle scene in such a smooth way. The novel wouldn't have been the same without them, because the twisted interactions between these very twisted characters are what give Faith its dark, delicious edge.
Early on in the novel, the enemy ship is described as the "bastard child of Moby Dick and Kafka: invincible and strange." The Moby Dick reference works on several levels, which I won't bore you with here, but the most obvious one is the obsessive way Foord/Ahab hunts his opponent up and down the solar system. The majority of this novel describes the spectacular battle between the two ships in a way that may pose danger to your fingernails (if you're a biter) or your cardiovascular system (depending on your blood pressure). It's a thrilling knock-down, drag-out duel that gradually takes on new layers of meaning until the final, shocking revelation.
(Which reminds me of a word of warning I would like to add to this review. It's entirely possible that I'm the only reader who does this, but when I start a new novel I typically check towards the end of the book to see what the final chapter heading is. I do this because I want to know whether I'm dealing with a book consisting of, say, 40 little chapters or 10 big ones. It's just something I like to know from the start. In either case, whether you tend to do this or not, don't do it in this case, because the final chapter in this novel is the only one with a subtitle, and that subtitle is a spoiler that will severely affect how you read the rest of the novel. This is obviously not meant as a criticism of Faith or John Love in any way, simply a word of warning in case I'm not the only person who likes to know how many chapters a book has. Trust me: don't peek.)
Faith is at times an almost unpleasantly intense, claustrophobic book to read. The crew of the Charles Manson are, for most of the story, confined to the cramped bridge of their ship. There's no getting away from their tics, the nasty edges of their minds, the passive-aggressive (or sometimes just plain aggressive) verbal sparring they consider pleasant conversation. If you only enjoy novels with likable characters, Faith is not for you. John Love also has a penchant for sharp but unpleasant metaphors and similes. He often writes long, elegant sentences and then abruptly drops a shocking twist or a bomb of a revelation in the very last sub-clause. He uses bodily functions or sexual acts in surprising and uncomfortable ways, e.g. when he compares the relentless back-and-forth dynamic of a space battle to masturbation. In a nutshell: it's not always pretty.
In either case, Faith is a science fiction debut of the highest order. It has fascinating, well-rounded characters who will remain with you for a long time. It has gorgeous, understated prose. It is chock-full of tension, making it a compulsive page-turner. It has an intriguing fictional universe which, I hope, will host more novels in the future. It's got one of the highest signal-to-noise ratios I've encountered in a long time, which, if you think about it, is really something, given that the vast majority of it describes one long, protracted battle. Faith is a novel I maybe would have expected from the mind of Iain M. Banks -- and if that isn't a compliment for an SF debut, I don't know what is. What I do know is that it's only early January, and I'm already sure that this novel will end up on my list of 2012 favorites.
Three centuries later, the Sakhrans have been assimilated into the larger interstellar empire known as the Commonwealth, when suddenly the strange, immensely powerful ship returns. The Commonwealth dispatches an Outsider, one of only nine in its ultimate class of warships, to stop this inscrutable enemy.
John Love's stunning debut novel Faith is the story of this confrontation.
The first two sections of Faith introduce two false protagonists in extreme, dangerous situations. In the hands of a lesser writer these chapters could have led to empty action scenes devoid of human interest, but John Love has the knack of making a character interesting and real in a paragraph or two. At the same time, these sections help the fictional universe take shape and set the stage for the real meat of the novel. Still, it's surprising when those characters disappear from view for the rest of the novel in favor of Aaron Foord, Faith's real main character.
Foord is the captain of the Charles Manson, the Outsider-class ship that will try to prevent the Commonwealth from going the way of the Sakhran Empire. Outsiders are the ultimate warships: sleek, sturdy, and so jam-packed with weapons and drives that their crews barely fit and end up living inside them like animals in burrows. Appropriately, the crews are outsiders themselves: sociopaths, psychopaths and various other miscreants who are immensely gifted but were, to put it mildly, not recruited for their people skills. Outsiders "were conceived in back alleys, built and launched in secret, and commissioned without ceremony."
Faith really gets going once we're on board the Charles Manson with Foord and his crew. As John Love describes it in his typically sparse, eloquent prose, the Charles Manson is "a ship crewed by people who had lost, or never had, the motives of people." Throughout the confrontation with the enemy ship, we get to know each of the four humans and two aliens on the bridge in intimate detail. At one point or another, we learn what brought each of them to this point. It's amazing that John Love manages to weave all of these narratives into what's essentially one long battle scene in such a smooth way. The novel wouldn't have been the same without them, because the twisted interactions between these very twisted characters are what give Faith its dark, delicious edge.
Early on in the novel, the enemy ship is described as the "bastard child of Moby Dick and Kafka: invincible and strange." The Moby Dick reference works on several levels, which I won't bore you with here, but the most obvious one is the obsessive way Foord/Ahab hunts his opponent up and down the solar system. The majority of this novel describes the spectacular battle between the two ships in a way that may pose danger to your fingernails (if you're a biter) or your cardiovascular system (depending on your blood pressure). It's a thrilling knock-down, drag-out duel that gradually takes on new layers of meaning until the final, shocking revelation.
(Which reminds me of a word of warning I would like to add to this review. It's entirely possible that I'm the only reader who does this, but when I start a new novel I typically check towards the end of the book to see what the final chapter heading is. I do this because I want to know whether I'm dealing with a book consisting of, say, 40 little chapters or 10 big ones. It's just something I like to know from the start. In either case, whether you tend to do this or not, don't do it in this case, because the final chapter in this novel is the only one with a subtitle, and that subtitle is a spoiler that will severely affect how you read the rest of the novel. This is obviously not meant as a criticism of Faith or John Love in any way, simply a word of warning in case I'm not the only person who likes to know how many chapters a book has. Trust me: don't peek.)
Faith is at times an almost unpleasantly intense, claustrophobic book to read. The crew of the Charles Manson are, for most of the story, confined to the cramped bridge of their ship. There's no getting away from their tics, the nasty edges of their minds, the passive-aggressive (or sometimes just plain aggressive) verbal sparring they consider pleasant conversation. If you only enjoy novels with likable characters, Faith is not for you. John Love also has a penchant for sharp but unpleasant metaphors and similes. He often writes long, elegant sentences and then abruptly drops a shocking twist or a bomb of a revelation in the very last sub-clause. He uses bodily functions or sexual acts in surprising and uncomfortable ways, e.g. when he compares the relentless back-and-forth dynamic of a space battle to masturbation. In a nutshell: it's not always pretty.
In either case, Faith is a science fiction debut of the highest order. It has fascinating, well-rounded characters who will remain with you for a long time. It has gorgeous, understated prose. It is chock-full of tension, making it a compulsive page-turner. It has an intriguing fictional universe which, I hope, will host more novels in the future. It's got one of the highest signal-to-noise ratios I've encountered in a long time, which, if you think about it, is really something, given that the vast majority of it describes one long, protracted battle. Faith is a novel I maybe would have expected from the mind of Iain M. Banks -- and if that isn't a compliment for an SF debut, I don't know what is. What I do know is that it's only early January, and I'm already sure that this novel will end up on my list of 2012 favorites.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book is meandering and insanely repetitive. The writer tries to be spiritual or deep or clever
and manages none. The physics make absolutely no sense, even within the domain of the universe in the book.
I gritted my teeth every time a space ship decelerates by turning off it's engines.
Most decisions made by the characters are devoid of any reason. Example:
About 1/5 of the book is dedicated to describe a coach ride to reach a parked ship.
The writes states several times that the trip could have been done by air in minutes,
but the main character involved insists (again, several times) that it absolutely must be done by
a land coach. Because of this trip many lives are lost and he almost doesn't make it to the ship.
The reason for his insistence is never explained. Like the rest of the book, it is extremely unsatisfactory.
The Ship, called 'Her' (very annoying) has god-like capabilities and awareness and is also completely helpless
and dumb, depending on how it suites the writer at any given point.
Skip this book, it is a huge pile of desperately-trying-to-be-deep babble.
and manages none. The physics make absolutely no sense, even within the domain of the universe in the book.
I gritted my teeth every time a space ship decelerates by turning off it's engines.
Most decisions made by the characters are devoid of any reason. Example:
About 1/5 of the book is dedicated to describe a coach ride to reach a parked ship.
The writes states several times that the trip could have been done by air in minutes,
but the main character involved insists (again, several times) that it absolutely must be done by
a land coach. Because of this trip many lives are lost and he almost doesn't make it to the ship.
The reason for his insistence is never explained. Like the rest of the book, it is extremely unsatisfactory.
The Ship, called 'Her' (very annoying) has god-like capabilities and awareness and is also completely helpless
and dumb, depending on how it suites the writer at any given point.
Skip this book, it is a huge pile of desperately-trying-to-be-deep babble.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not with a bang but...
An interesting Sci-fi novel. I liked the unique take on the genre with technologies and societies and beings that felt unique. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Tony
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not Great
The title of this book refers to the nickname of the alien spacecraft in the book. The spacecraft is called "Faith" because it has god like powers. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Notely
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good sci fi with a disappointing end, but still worth it
A good science fiction story, which uses technology to talk more about the human condition then about science. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Erik A. Saltwell
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poop fetish, no science and lame sociopaths
There were so many opportunities to put down this book unfinished, but I had faith. Too bad it never materialized. Read more
Published 7 months ago by A. Purviance
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unbelievably Creative and Captivating but Slow to Start and Rough...
A year ago, I read about an upcoming Sci-Fi novel about a battle between two indestructible spaceships. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Steve Skojec
2.0 out of 5 stars
2 stars for effort...
I only finished reading this book out of respect for the $15 I paid for it. Some of Mr Loves societal constructs had potential but after the reipetitious bludgeoning about Her and... Read more
Published 13 months ago by T. Perry
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best science fiction books in some time.
I bought this book, as is often the case, on a chance.
All I can say is that this was a magnificent book. Read more
All I can say is that this was a magnificent book. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Badoracle
3.0 out of 5 stars
good but not great
I rate this book by how much I wanted to just 'fast-forward' -- skip paragraphs to get to the end. It happened much more than I'd like. Read more
Published 14 months ago by WCanyon
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like a Star Trek movie on steroids (and other illegal substances)
John Love's spectacular novel is clearly influenced (in the best ways) by Star Trek, from many of the ideas and concepts (his Commonwealth is similar to Star Trek's Federation of... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Firebrand
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent First Novel!
Excellent first novel! It grabs you right from the start and doesn't let go. Very interesting characters and situation. Highly recommended. I'll be looking for more from him!
Published 15 months ago by Kenny A. Chaffin
