Review: Fallen, by Patrick Abbott

Character and world building in abundance

Many, many moons ago, I went to the Based Book Sale and picked up a copy of Patrick Abbott’s Fallen. Why did I pick it up? I have no recollection of why, it was that far back.

During the Upstream hiatus, when I was in a mood to not read anything, I finally forced myself to go through several books in the backlog. Sometimes, when I’m in a bloody-minded enough of a mood, I can plow into something. Fallen happened to be recently downloaded.

I immediately hit the first problem. Fallen is told in third person present, with is always a strike against a book to start with. (See: Chuck Wendig)

It was followed by pages of following protagonist Brendan Murphy (can we get more Irish a name?) as he tries to find purpose in life within the Pentagon bureaucracy—which in itself is a Sisyphean task (Which makes me think we need The Office for the Pentagon). Murphy has enough untreated PTSD for a platoon. I expected a long depressing slog. That was strike two, and I started to bet against finishing the book.

But the first chapter of Fallen is very much like the opening of the film Nobody. There’s no fun and no games, until we get the inciting incident.

Then we’re off to the races.

The Story

In the world of Fallen, aliens arrived at Earth five years before chapter one. Instead of taking over or invading, the Sabia were mostly just … there. Sabia reps would occasionally trade with certain countries, and be generally friendly, but otherwise, they keep to themselves.

Veteran Brendan Murphy, now a desk jockey at the Pentagon, is trapped in a day-to-day drudgery that would be suicide inducing, even if he didn’t have PTSD.

When Brendan encounters a terrorist attack against Sabia diplomats on his way home from work, he sees red and goes full Patriot Games,¹ rushing in to stop the terrorists. Despite saving the day, Brendan is promptly blown up for his efforts, riddled with shrapnel and losing a hand.

Luckily for Brendan, the Sabia response is immediate. He wakes up on the Sabia ship, fully repaired, and complete with a brand new hand. In response to his life-saving actions, the Sabia want Brendan to be an intelligence liaison to the Sabia,² attached to the United States embassy to the Sabia, on their ship.

But Brendan comes with his own troubles, both personal and professional. He has conflicting orders from the Pentagon, the embassy, and the Intelligence agencies, exacerbating his PTSD and ramping up his paranoia. He has been transferred to the wilderness of mirrors. Over the course of his job, he has to be an impromptu diplomate, cultural translator, negotiator, playing the art of the deal, all on top of his actual day-to-day open sources assessment. He has to deal with hostage situations, conflicting stories from his own people, as well as the complexities of interacting with an alien race. The alien civilization is entirely classified, and Brendan is supposed to break through that wall. But back in Afghanistan, he was part of tribal relations, so if anyone is prepped for this job, it’s Brendan.

Meanwhile, Brendan is spending a little more time with his Sabia doctor than is professionally warranted. When complications develop from the Sabia’s life-saving efforts, his life is about to change forever.

Fallen has a lot of character introspection without the naval-gazing you’d usually expect. But Fallen is both surprisingly character-driven, and plot heavy as the same time. Think of it as a John le Carre espionage novel, only with aliens and a moral center. Patrick Abbott has chosen to skip past any potential action set pieces, to move straight to the aftermath of each engagement. Much of Fallen deals with Brendan Murphy’s internal conflicts, as well as the other loyalties pulling at him from every direction.

Surprisingly, Abbott doesn’t have many in the way of character details. Normally, that interferes with my reading and makes it difficult for me to track characters. However, it wasn’t a problem here.

Abbott balances out a lot out of elements here, and it’s very impressive. Fallen covers elements of philosophical thought, some religion, on top of the plot and character. Everyone has their own agenda. Everyone has their own vices. And everyone is hiding something important. And no one and nothing about the Sabia is exactly what they appear to be.

As Abbott is also a veteran, I can only presume that the PTSD and dealing with the military and intelligence bureaucracies are so well-written because they’re either very well-researched, or from firsthand experience, or both.

The Characters

Our main narrator, Brendan Murphy, is a multifaceted character with a lot of (aforementioned) problems. He tries to cover his many issues with ceremony, formality, and bursts of extroversion. The Sabia are laid back compared to him. And there are moments where the reader can tell that this boy is clearly broken. There were moments when I couldn’t tell if he was paranoid or bipolar on top of everything else. But you know his PTSD and mood swings are bad when even the aliens are wondering “Why does are the humans not treating his combat illness? Clearly, we need to fix him.”

Brendan is interesting during conflict, especially when he locks in on the target—any target. When the adrenaline kicks in, he turns into a berserker. It’s fun when it turns into berserker sermons.

And we get to learn everything about Brendan’s life. Literally, everything. Down to his genetics. And that’s not even a joke; it’s barely an exaggeration.

We occasionally have perspectives from the Sabia Esfirs, Brendan’s doctor. She feels very much like a surgeon by nature, proud of her work. Also, she’s a bit of a snob, learning perfect Queens English, and contractions and lower-class accents seem to be her kryptonite.

Berina is a Sabia pilot. But like everyone else here, she’s more than she seems. She’s outgoing and vivacious, deeply curious about humans, and Brendan. If this were a Nora Roberts romance novel, she would be the tomboy best friend playing matchmaker.

Kimya is a more minor character, but I greatly enjoy her. She’s Sabia security, and a total gun nut. She’s highly entertaining.

Father Baldwin is almost a minor character, but has a surprising amount of impact on the story. He’s a former military man who joined the priesthood, and wears the mask of King Baldwin IV (Kingdom of Heaven).

The World

Abbott does a great job of world-building on multiple levels. The Sabia arrive, and Earth politics shift. The next competition between nations becomes how each nation can vie for Sabia attention. The US embassy is worthless (having needed embassy help in the past, no lies detected).

I also don’t know how much of Earth is just present day, plus aliens. The Sandbox is still a problem. Ukraine comes up. There’s even a dialog exchange of

“I know a couple of Klerks who served in Global Outcomes. So that makes you part of the Boer mafia, eh?”³

There is a clear addition to “our world” that stands out. Abbott has also made Christian terrorist groups freaking out about the Sabia showing up, some thinking that they’re demons. Normally, I’d highlight this as a deficit—why invent Christian terrorists when there are Jihadis. However, I’m not sure how I would have rewritten it any different. It may work better now than when Abbott originally published, since social media seems swamped with “any alien sighting is really about demons.”

At the same time, Abbott is busy putting together more layers to Sabia culture than any other science-fiction author I can think of currently in print. Frankly, the amount of effort and layers of culture that Abbott has put into the Sabia makes the worlds of Dune look shallow and undeveloped. This is despite how much of Sabia culture—even words—is itself considered “classified” to outsiders (“classified” being the running gag of this novel).

It’s amusing watching Brendan Murphy teaching the Sabia something as simple as shaking hands. The Sabia are only a little European, preferring soccer to baseball—or as they call it, “The boring game.” I guess they aren’t interested in statistics.

Also fun is just the simple idea that “Yes, some things that are worthless on Earth are worth more to other planets who don’t have it.” That took up a few chapters. John Ringo would be proud.⁴

I must admit, this world-building involves some of the smoothest, most natural data dumps that I have ever read, via mostly in perfectly naturally flowing conversations. Eat your heart out “David Weber Orders a Pizza.” Some of it comes from Murphy’s own interpretation, and some of it was intelligence via negative space (what isn’t said).

The Sabia is a matriarchy, and if you think that’s a warning sign, you wouldn’t be far off. I was amused that the page count on this book was 666 pages.

Also, it seems to be a universal truth that the Secret Police never has a sense of humor.

Politics

If you dislike spirituality in your character development, I’ve probably already lost you.

There isn’t really much in the way of current politics here. As we see everything through Murphy’s eyes, Murphy himself spends a lot of time trying to come out with the best outcomes for everyone involved of every side of an issue, and that involves understanding all the players and their motivations.

But if you think that “government bureaucracy is full of stupid people” is a political issue, then yeah, it comes up from time to time.

Content Warning

This is pretty PG-13, really. Maybe 80s PG-13, but still…

Who is it for?

This is a little bit of science fiction John Le Carre, a better written Frank Herbert, and dashes of Screwtape and Perelandra. If that sounds like fun, you might want to give this a try.

Why buy it?

Fallen is a solid, character-driven work of someone trying to survive the insane policies of a world gone mad, while falling into an alien culture. Dune might have tried to do it well, but Fallen did it better.

1. Funny enough, Chapter 14 is called “Patriot’s Game.

2. Mostly just open sources.

3. For the record, if you don’t get the joke, you’ve probably never heard of the film Blood Diamond, or the South African PMC “Executive Outcomes.”

4. See The “Maple Syrup War” in John Ringo’s Live Free or Die.