The verdict
A slow-burning, character-driven space opera about identity and loyalty. Read it for the moral tangle rather than the battles, and accept that it sets more than it settles.
Quick facts
- Author
- E.M. Swift-Hook
- Series
- Haruspex Trilogy part one (Fortune's Fools book 4)
- Genre
- Space opera
- Best for
- Readers who want character-driven space opera with tangled morals
- Skip it if
- You insist on starting a series at its first-ever book
Author E.M. Swift-Hook
Trust A Few is a character-driven space opera about identity, memory and loyalty in a future where none of those things are safe. It opens the Haruspex Trilogy, and it sits inside the wider Fortune’s Fools sequence, so the book arrives with history behind it rather than starting from nothing.
The idea behind it
The central concern is a simple one and the book takes it seriously: what is a person, once their memory has been taken? Avilon Revide comes back as Vitos Ketzel after his past has been purged, and the novel follows him trying to work out who he now is and where, if anywhere, he belongs. It is an old question in science fiction and it is handled here with more patience than usual.
Around that sits a future with the texture of a dystopia: a society where survival is the main currency, where the line between heroism and villainy depends entirely on where you are standing, and where the military, the state and the people who profit from both are not the same thing. Jazatar Baldrik, known as Jaz, is the other pole of the story, and the relationship between the two men carries a great deal of the book’s weight.
The strongest thing in it is the refusal to hand out clean moral positions. Characters who look like pawns from one angle look like revolutionaries from another, and the book lets each of them be the hero of their own account. That is a harder trick than it sounds, because it requires the reader to hold several incompatible sympathies at once.
The story, spoiler-light
The narrative follows a small cast through a situation that keeps shifting under them. There is a soldier’s life in the Special Legion, which the book presents as a slow descent rather than a career, and there is the business of a memory that has been erased and a past that has not stopped mattering to the people who remember it. The plot is interested in the consequences of what has already happened rather than in a single clean objective.
Because it is the opening part of a trilogy, it deliberately leaves threads running. That is worth knowing before you start. It resolves enough to be satisfying and holds back enough to make the second volume necessary, which is normal for this kind of structural choice and occasionally frustrating if you were hoping for a self-contained book.
What makes it science fiction
This is space opera with a dystopian edge, closer in spirit to political intrigue than to hard science. Faster-than-light travel, interplanetary powers and a militarised society provide the furniture, and the book is not especially interested in explaining any of it. What it does instead is use the setting to make the ethical questions sharper, which is what the best political science fiction tends to do.
The memory purge is the one genuinely speculative hinge, and it is doing real work. A person whose past has been removed is a clean test case for the question of whether identity is memory, and the book keeps returning to it without ever resolving it into a slogan.
Who should read it, and who should give it a miss
- Read it if you like space opera built around character and intrigue rather than space battles.
- Read it if you enjoy morally grey casts where nobody is fully right.
- Read it if you want the start of a trilogy that is already connected to a larger series.
- Give it a miss if you insist on starting a series at its first-ever book. This is an entry point, but it is not volume one of the whole sequence.
- Give it a miss if you want a fast, neat plot. The book takes its time and leaves threads open on purpose.
Where to start, and what to read next
Trust A Few is written as the opening of the Haruspex Trilogy, so it functions as a starting point for this arc even though it carries the number four in the wider Fortune’s Fools sequence. If you want the earlier history, the preceding Fortune’s Fools books are the place to go, and reading them first will make some of the relationships land harder.
After this, the Haruspex Trilogy continues, and it is worth reading straight through rather than with a long gap, because the cast is large and the politics are dense.
The verdict
Trust A Few is a thoughtful, slow-burning space opera with an unusual amount of attention paid to what its characters actually believe. The memory-purge premise is used properly, the moral positions are genuinely tangled, and the prose has a precision that suits the material. Its weaknesses are the usual ones for an opening volume: it sets more than it settles, and it asks you to invest before it pays out.
Read it if you want a space opera that treats loyalty and identity as the real subject. It is not a book of battles, and it is not trying to be.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to read the earlier Fortune’s Fools books first?
Not strictly. It is written as the start of a new trilogy, so it works as an entry point. Reading the earlier books first will make some relationships and references clearer.
Is it a standalone?
No. It is part one of the Haruspex Trilogy and it deliberately leaves threads open for the volumes that follow.
Is it heavy on space battles?
No. It is a character and politics novel first. The military context matters, but the book is not built around combat sequences.