“The Faith of Beasts” by James S.A. Corey

Arbeit macht frei.

The second volume of the Captive’s War (planned to be a trilogy AFAIK) holds up.

Spoilers for book 1 ahead, but nothing you can’t find out from the back-of-the-book blurb for book 2.

Dafyd’s new position as designated go-between between the Carryx and the human moiety hasn’t endeared him to the rest of the captive humans. To one degree or another everyone knows it’s not actually Dafyd calling the shots; to one degree or another they understand that the rebellion he betrayed wouldn’t have succeeded in any way that mattered. But human psychology is what it is; Dafyd is the one they see, Dafyd is the one giving the orders, Dafyd is the one with rak-hund and Soft Lothark bodyguards as him being killed or injured by angry fellow humans would be an annoying inconvenience to the Carryx.

Meanwhile, now that humanity has shown itself to be a potentially useful resource, the Carryx are putting that resource to use. Some of the human moiety are put to work continuing the research they had already begun on the Carryx world-palace; others are sent to other worlds to see how else they might be useful. Safety isn’t something the Carryx are worried about, of course, and their war with the “deathless enemy” is omnipresent. Rickar and Compar are on a ship going to the front lines; Jessyn is sent to see what can be learned on a recently conquered world.

So about that war.

I made what seemed like a pretty obvious guess about the nature of the “deathless enemy” after finishing The Mercy of Gods; the Livesuit novella (strongly recommended but not essential) confirmed it. Looks like it’s more complicated than that. RAFO.

And to explain the “arbeit macht frei” thing: there is so much of the Holocaust behind this book. I said much of this when I read and reviewed The Mercy of Gods, but these books took guts on the part of Abraham and Franck (the duo that is James SA Corey). A collaborator is a hard thing to make into a sympathetic character, but I can all but promise that the two of them looked at the history of the Holocaust for this.

In particular I’m thinking of the ghettos the Nazis forced the Jews into in Eastern Europe, before sending them to the gas chambers. It’s not widely known that the Nazis largely stayed out of those ghettos after walling everybody in; they picked out leaders from among the Jews in the ghettos and said they were in charge. So when the Nazis needed a thousand able bodied people to work in a munitions factory or said to gather all the old and infirm so they could send them somewhere nice - the people in the ghettos knew perfectly well that the Nazis were really the ones in charge, but it was their friends & neighbors that the Nazis had put in charge that actually made the lists of names.

You can see the parallels. Makes the book a tough read, but an excellent one, and my anticipation of the next book is very high.