What do you do when you undergo an accident that leaves you unable to interact with the basic technology underpinning your society? What do you do when that accident leaves you fit for one task few others would care to assume? What do you do when your new status leaves your old friends uncomfortable and your new ones unimpressed with you?

What do you do when it turns out your accident was no accident, and no one will listen?

In Debris, Tanyana is among the elite of Varsnia. In her society, technology harnessing elementary particles known as pions powers almost everything. Tanyana is a pion-binder, one of the best, an architect of buildings and statues for the highest bidder. But an accident during an unexpected inspection renders Tanyana unable to see pions any more. Instead, she can see debris, a byproduct of pion usage that interferes with pions (and not much else). Tanyana becomes pressed into being a debris collector: the gig comes with a silver suit bonded to her wrists that provides some limited shapeshifting capabilities. Despite their critical role in society, debris collectors receive little notice and little respect.

There are hints that not all is as it should be—or used to be—almost from the beginning. Tanyana and her team of debris collectors lurch from one disaster to the next. Eventually, Tanyana discovers that she is a pawn in a larger gambit involving forces far beyond her comprehension. Her accident was no accident, and since then she has not been as abandoned as she thought—instead, she has been shaped and manipulated by people close to her as well as those watching from a distance.

My problem is that I felt like I was watching from a distance, and that did not help at all. In some books, the hint of grand conspiracies and hidden histories is tantalizing and can help drive the plot as we cheer for the characters to solve the mystery. In this case, I just didn’t find myself invested in the characters or their problems.

Tanyana annoyed me at first, but then I realized it isn’t her fault. She’s actually a nice person, and proactive in her own way—what was annoying me was every person blaming Tanyana for everything that went wrong. She was like a personal magnet for the blame of Murphy’s Law. Moreover, no one seemed to want to explain anything to Tanyana (and then they blamed her when she was ignorant of a procedure). These behaviours made every character seem like an ass, and I disliked all of them. (Except maybe Lad. Lad’s cool.)

I also struggled with not knowing enough about the world Anderton has obviously gone to pains to construct. Pions are an actual thing. Are the magical pions of Debris supposed to be related? It’s not clear. Anderton seems to indicate that everyone can see pions but not many are skilled at manipulating them as Tanyana used to be. What does everyone else spend their time doing? If pions have replaced the role of old school machines, what happened to all the scientists and engineers? I don’t doubt that Anderton could provide a satisfactory explanation, because revolutions like the one she describes have certainly happened in our past. But for all the interesting ideas she throws in here, there are still aspects of her society that remain vague.

It’s not all bad news. Anderton genuinely has something interesting here. I’d like to learn more about debris collecting, and I definitely want to know why the bad guys are so bent on doing something that seems to threaten existence as we know it—are they just evil, or are they misguided? Part of this curiosity is the result, of course, of that vagueness I mentioned above—but part of it is because Anderton whets my appetite with the right amount of conflict and questions.

Additionally, I loved watching Tanyana adapt to her new circumstances after her accident. Her world changes so completely. At first she lives in denial, thinking she might get to maintain her accustomed lifestyle. Gradually she realizes how wrong she is. She must make new friendships—many of her old “friends” desert her following her loss of status—and determine how to cope with her inability to use pions—which, in this society, is definitely a disability.

Debris is a kind of bland novel. It has some of the basic book nutrients: a passable plot, serviceable characters. It lacks the zest and spice that make a book memorable. I want more, but I don’t know how much more—and certainly not with any urgency.

I wasn’t overly fond of Debris, Jo Anderton’s first book in this series, and I approached Suited with trepidation. I wasn’t sure Anderton had what it would take to grab me and make me enjoy this book. And as I started reading, and the characters felt flat and uninspiring, I resigned myself to another dull review. Then it got interesting. The characters began changing. The stakes got higher. And by the end of the book, I was furiously flipping electronic pages as I raced to discover what would happen—and suddenly, Anderton had proved me wrong. Well done!

So, Suited starts off in a lacklustre way. Tanyana’s team of debris collectors gets split up by the manipulative puppet men. Tanyana and Lad go to one, newly-formed team, while Lad’s protective brother, Kichlan, stays with some of the others. This split creates an interesting dynamic, with Tanyana and Lad having to look out for each other. For the most part, however, Suited starts off slow. There is too much drama about (and whining from) the Keeper, the mysterious being whom only Lad (and Tanyana, when suited) can interact with. The Keeper is intimately connected with the debris that Tanyana and other collectors are charged with retrieving, but Anderton keeps her cards very close to her chest until the end of the book. As a result, I was frustrated and not particularly interested in liking any of these characters. Yet I soldiered on.

One issue I had with Debris was the paucity of detailed worldbuilding. Anderton tossed around terms like the “veche”, and I gathered that the book was set in a city called Movoc-under-Keeper that is part of a larger country called Varsnia. However, we never get a sense of what kind of city or country these places are. We don’t get a very clear idea of the culture. Although there are hints that Varsnian society is highly stratified (Tanyana, before her accident, occupying that tenuous, upper-middle-class position of the nouveau bourgeoisie), there is very little description of how the ordinary citizens of Movoc-under-Keeper go about their lives. The pages are flat in this sense; they seem a little barren and empty in the background. On the macro level, we get almost no sense of the politics of this country. Suited does little to rectify the deficiencies of culture. However, it does clarify the relationships between the national and local veches and the puppet men. We learn about the origins of the puppet men and why the veche is interested in working with them, and all of this provides more context as Anderton sets up events for the third book.

I was also very frustrated with Tanyana’s lack of agency in Debris. Part of this is a natural response to suddenly being rendered powerless, friendless, and alone—not to mention suffering a major trauma. Nevertheless, the refrain that she was being manipulated and used by the puppet men, which is continued in this book, started to become repetitive and annoying. At least in Suited, though, the ways in which the puppet men are shaping Tanyana—and to what ends—become more clear. Anderton further develops the antagonism between the Keepers and the puppet men, and Tanyana’s role as a kind of pawn caught in the middle, effectively, albeit not necessarily with much skill or detail.

Suited’s weaknesses are quite similar to its predecessor in this respect. Anderton clearly has good ideas, but almost all of my dissatisfaction with these books are a result of her description—or lack thereof. She’s just frightfully vague at times. There are “doors” in the world that lead to a world of nothingness? It’s not exactly lazy writing, because I get the sense that she tries very hard. It just doesn’t quite measure up to my very exacting standards.

Somehow, though, everything pulls together in the final act. Tanyana has made some major discoveries. And finally, finally, she steps up and decides to go full metal jacket on the puppet men. (This is not a metaphor, as her suit is a metal-like substance!) The moment after Tanyana’s new fugitive status forces her hand and forces her to declare that “enough is enough” was a moment I had been waiting for since halfway through Debris, and experiencing it was sweet indeed. In concert with the disturbing transformations wracking Tanyana’s body, this declaration of war on the puppet men is a welcome (if predictable) turn of events.

(I wish Anderton could have done more with Tanyana’s pregnancy, however, because the way she treats it makes it seem more like a plot point than anything else.)

There are almost two climaxes in the book, the first acting as a motivator for the second. In Tanyana’s confrontation with Aleksey—who demonstrates what will become of her if she becomes merely a tool of the puppet men—we lose Lad. He sacrifices himself to save her, and in so doing provides Tanyana with the strength to forge ahead and survive, but at a cost. This leads to her declaration of war and taking the fight to the puppet men, who very nearly kick her ass. The last chapter is an adrenaline rush equivalent to nothing else in the rest of the book, not even the fight with Aleksey. Suddenly, the hints that Anderton has laid throughout the book come into focus—those not-so-subtle references to “programmers” start making sense. Again, the weakness of the description leaves me less-than-fully invested in the direction Anderton has chosen to take this story. I must admit to being intrigued, however!

Anyone who has read Debris and didn’t absolutely hate it should do themselves a favour and read Suited. It is progress, for the story and the writing show promising development. I am now very eager to read book three. There is probably no better compliment than that!

My reviews of the Veiled Worlds series:
Suited →