The Sardonyx Net by Elizabeth A. Lynn

Bjorn reviews The Sardonyx Net, a standalone Sci-Fi novel by Elizabeth A. Lynn.

Captured trying to recover his stolen property, Starcaptain Dana Ikoro is arrested and sentenced to ten years of slavery on the slave world of Chabad. There could be crueler masters than Rhani Yago, the beautiful and powerful aristocrat. Dana forges a dangerous bond with his master–and discovers that on a world where drugged criminals are used as slaves, rebellion may be the highest form of love.

“We intend to break that chain, Commander. I doubt that those who profit off such evils as drugs and slaves will be able to stop us. I didn’t expect to scare you. I just wanted to meet an enemy.”

Once upon a time, before anyone has ever even thought the word ‘grimdark’, there was a young writer called Elizabeth A. Lynn who decided to write a stunning SF classic that evokes Dune, the books of Marian L. Thorpe (which came out decades later, so I guess it should the other way round), and is like a bitter drink you can’t stop sipping on until you get impatient and swallow the whole glass in one big gulp, like me reading this book.

The beginning is deceptively simple: a wannabe smuggler of a drug called dorazine –used to control slaves, turning them into grinning, detached robots – is caught before he has a chance to profit and finds himself enslaved. There is a shortage of dorazine and a brewing rebellion against slavery the drug makes safe for the owners. It’s easy to guess where this is going. Except it isn’t, because every character has a need they’ll do anything to fulfil; the closest this book gets to having #goodrep are a few characters who will only do almost anything. Those needs clash; the definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ blur until neither of those words means anything much. The slaves of kind Rhani don’t receive dorazine, so their senses are not blurred. Are they happy about it, whatever their names are?

Not all of The Sardonyx Net aged perfectly well. I can’t say what one of my problems was, because I’d be spoiling something, but I had to grind my teeth a bit and remind myself the book is 44 years old. The way Lynn envisions computers is… charming, but also oddly prescient; when Rhani uses her ‘com-units’ she communicates in direct language, ChatGPT-style, even if the results are displayed ‘in green letters’. There are also a few weird typos, which is what one should expect from traditional publishing, but only one confused me enough to re-read the passage.

I’m nitpicking here at a smashing read. The Sardonyx Net brings *immense* worldbuilding, mixes action with politics, brings the characters to life and fleshes them out until I begin to think of them as real people. It must have taken much more courage in 1981 to publish a book so unapologetically, casually queer than it would now. On the other hand, it was probably easier to unflinchingly go into the topic of slavery the way Lynn does. The world was less complicated in certain ways in the 1980s. I am not a big SF reader, but I devoured 448 pages of this book almost in one go, which somewhat ruined my plans for the day, and having to go to sleep at some point was irritating. I wish there was a sequel, because I would very much like to know what happens next – for Rhani, Dana, and, as disturbing as he is, Zed. There is no good and pure person to be found on those pages; this book is as realistic as SF gets. The Sardonyx Net was my first Elizabeth A. Lynn read, but won’t be the last.