Knight: A Chronicle of Sybil's War is the second novel in Timothy Zahn's series, Sybil's War. It's an epic space opera perfect for fans of the genre.

Once upon a time, Nicole Hammond and her partner Bungie were focused entirely on trying to survive on the streets of Philadelphia. Now, that seems like so long ago. Against all odds, they have been abducted by mysterious aliens – and unfortunately for them, they do not imagine this experience.

Her time among the aliens changed her, and now she is a being known as a Sybil – a human with the ability to communicate with aliens. She must find a way out of this war, for everyone's sakes, even if nobody is thrilled with the situation.

Before I delve into my review, I need to be completely honest here. I did it again. AGAIN. I picked up yet another novel without realizing it was a sequel beforehand. I don't know why I seem to have gone through a string of this lately. I need to up my Goodreads search skills.

Anyway, despite not having read the first novel, I didn't have any trouble following along with Knight. Many early events sound pretty similar to other series (games and novels) that I've seen in the past, so that helped a lot.

I enjoyed reading about Zahn's alien races and how they function as individuals and society. If I'm honest, those were the highlights of this novel to me. That doesn't mean the rest was bad, just that these moments and revelations stole the show as far as I'm concerned.

“Knight” eBook was published in 2019 and was written by Timothy Zahn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Zahn). This is the second book in his “A Chronicle of the Sibyl's War” series.

I categorize this novel as ‘R’. The story is set in more or less contemporary time, but it is predicated upon the abduction of the main character, Nicole Hammond, as well as a few others from Philadelphia by aliens.

In the first book of the series, Hammond was taken aboard the starship Fyrantha. While she is far from the only human on board, she is the only human with the ability to communicate with the aliens and the ship. The enormous ship is divided into areas controlled by different factions. The aliens pit various races against one another looking for who is the most combative. The aliens that abducted Hammond seem to be testing the races to find those capable of becoming soldiers. Once identified as having warlike tendencies the information is sold to others who will enslave them for their wars.

Hammond and a few of the other humans aboard the Fyrantha realize the need to make humanity look incapable of taking up arms. That is the only way they think they can save Earth. Hammond finally gets tired of keeping off the alien’s radar and decides she needs to take action. She feels she must find a way of taking control of the ship from the aliens.

I enjoyed the 7+ hours I spent reading this 326-page science fiction novel. I thought that the beginning was a little chaotic. There was no lead-in to the story. Definitely, the first book in the series should be read before this one if possible. The plot is different and enjoyable. I’m not sure that the cover art is a very good choice. It doesn’t seem to have a lot of relation to the story. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

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Published by Tor Books on April 16, 2019

Knight is subtitled A Chronicle of the Sybil’s War. It is the second book of a trilogy, following Pawn and preceding Queen. The ending isn’t quite a cliffhanger, but it doesn’t resolve much of anything.

Timothy Zahn’s premise is that several humans and various aliens are enslaved on a two-mile long ship. Sometimes the Shipmasters have different species fight each othe using relatively harmless weapons (like paintballl guns) in different kinds of arenas. When aliens fight well, the Shipmasters sell the location of their planet to other aliens, who can capture slaves from that planet for use as fodder in combat.

The ship is having problems, probably because enslaving people wasn't its original mission, although what that mission might have been has yet to be revealed. A human named Nicole Lee is tasked with watching over the ship. She was promoted from Sybil to Protector, a position that requires the ship (but not the Shipmasters) to give her commands some deference. To maximize her communication with the ship, she has to ingest chemicals through an inhaler that will shorten her lifespan.

The ship is divided into quadrants. The Shipmasters seem to be in control of one quadrant but less in control of the others. Nicole’s assigned task is to maintain and protect the ship, but her self-assigned task is to convince the Shipmasters that humans are lousy fighters and therefore not worth kidnapping as warrior-slaves. That plan doesn’t work out quite the way Nicole intends.

Aliens enslaving humans is standard space opera fare. The story is moderately interesting but probably not worthy of a trilogy. Some of Nicole’s adventures as she wanders through the ship, trying to figure out what’s what and intervening in arena battles, come across as filler. The alien races she encounters are not particularly imaginative, but the humans don’t have much personality beyond the pluckiness that we expect from sf human as they outsmart their alien captors, so it all evens out.

As an action-adventure story, Knight has modest entertainment value. Zahn keeps the action moving even when it seems to be moving in circles, biding time until the story gets around to advancing. The middle novels of trilogies often come across as bridges between two better novels, and that is probably the case with Knight. It might be more fair to review the trilogy as a whole, but the third novel isn’t out yet, so I have to give the second one, standing on its own, a thumbs sideways.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

I really enjoyed this one. Nicole is accustomed to living by her wits and it’s this attribute that keeps her alive and relatively unscathed. That, and her stubbornness in refusing to lie down and accept the fate that awaits herself, her companions and the rest of Earth… The stakes in this story couldn’t be higher – Earth is at the mercy of a ruthless, technologically advanced race of aliens who are looking to cash in on whatever humanity has to offer in the way of bankable commodities. Up to now, the abducted slaves on the vast ship that has snatched them up, have managed to persuade their masters that humans are useless at fighting, so they have concluded that selling off humans as slave armies to the highest bidder is pointless.

Nicole’s skills at communicating with some of the odd, alien components of the ship, such as the moth creatures, give her some vital advantages, but I think Zahn has successfully avoided making her too much of a Mary Sue. I also like the fact that the humans on board don’t all think the same way – some are simply intent on surviving at the expense of everyone else; others think the strategy that Nicole and her companions adopt is simply wrong and yet at least one key character believes that if she betrays her fellow conspirators, she will be rewarded by being freed to return to her family.

All in all, the desperate skirmishes and adventures aboard this extraordinary, vast ship make for gripping reading and I will be backtracking to discover how Nicole came to be aboard the Fyrantha and looking forward to the next slice of the adventure. The ebook arc copy of Knight: A Chronicle of the Sibyl’s War was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
8/10

Knight is typical of middle books in a series. The world building, backstory and characters were all introduced in book one. Now Nicole is trying to find her balance as enemies pop up everywhere. I enjoyed seeing how Nicole travels the ship as she is learning who to trust and what power she has the Protector of the ship. Other than that this just confines what I knew from the beginning. No surprise but a interesting and fun read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan - Tor/Forge for an eGalley of this novel.

Since I was requesting an opportunity to read the second book in a series I decided to read the first, Pawn, to prepare myself for this one. Both Pawn and Knight are quite similar, this second book has Nicole finding more alien races being pitted against each other so those who control the ship can observe how aggressive they are.

Nicole was a member of a gang in Philadelphia before she was abducted by space aliens. She discovered she has the ability to communicate with the ship, thereby proving to be a Sybil, and that ability sets her apart from other human captives. In this second book she has been told she is a Protector and/or a Caretaker of the ship. What Nicole spends her time doing is finding arena spaces on the ship and helping aliens fighting each other for survival. If the home planet of an alien race is shown to be aggressive enough to fight and kill, that planet population can be enslaved and used to fight the battles of other alien races. Sounds complicated but it's actually rather mundane. This series is, indeed, a space opera. Maybe it would present better as a film or television version, but I find the book version too slow and not enough of a challenge to my imagination as I read. I gave the series a fair chance but will not be continuing with future books.