Where Coyote was a novel about escaping tyranny for the new world, Coyote Rising finds our libertarian revolutionaries fighting for all that they've painstakingly built for themselves on Coyote, the moon to which they fled for a new start. Though the obviousness of the themes and the outcomes hamstrings this second effort from Mr. Steele, it is not without its charms.
Unlike the colonists on Coyote who spent the 230 year journey to the moon in biological stasis, nearly three centuries have past for everyone on Earth, plenty of time for technology to advance and for social systems to rise and fall. The tyrannical America, against which Lee rebelled, has ceased to exist, but the radical socialism that has replaced it isn't much of an improvement. New faces, new lingo, but the same single-party tyranny lies at the heart of their philosophy. The Western Hemisphere Union, or WHU, has arrived at Coyote, in ships much faster than the Alabama, and they too are eager to plant their flag, claim Coyote's land and convince the colonists to come over to their side. Seeing the WHU's representatives for what they are, the same enemy behind a different mask, Lee and his confederates wage and insurgency to reclaim what is rightfully theirs. But how can they succeed against such a technologically superior foe?
Coyote Rising introduces us to some new characters, two of which bring a welcome balance to the story. Alegra is a WHU refugee from Earth who wants only to quietly settle on Coyote and play her music in peace. Through her, we understand that Earth is in ecological collapse, a key motivating factor in the WHU's desire to claim Coyote for its own. For a trilogy far too black and white, Alegra is a welcome shade of gray. James Garcia, an ingenious architect, has also traveled with the WHU delegation. Troubled by his conscience, Garcia's sympathies with the colonists lead him down a dark and dangerous road. Together, James and Alegra do far more credit to the story than the cartoonishly machiavellian Matriarch and her hackneyed, robot henchman who, together, manage to make evil look clownish and silly. There's no genuine menace here. And this combined with an obvious conclusion robs the story of much of its punch.
Coyote Rising wanted to be defiant in the same way that Coyote was rebellious, but while the action pleases, the enemies here are just too flat. I'll stop short of calling this a disappointment because there was much here that satisfied, but the drop in quality from the first novel was unfortunately steep. (3/5 Stars)
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