Book Review: Vengeance of Orion by Ben Bova

Book #96 of 2023:

Vengeance of Orion by Ben Bova (Orion #2)

This first Orion sequel is interesting in its own right, but not nearly as good as its predecessor. That previous novel introduced humanity’s demigod champion by hurtling him progressively backwards in time, having to stop an adversary in each era determined to throw history off its tracks. Here, the character starts the book by materializing in the twelfth century BCE on the outskirts of Troy, where he soon finds himself caught up in the events of The Iliad. And I do mean those precise events — for about the first half of this story, author Ben Bova is basically just retelling Homer with a new viewpoint protagonist in the mix. And that’s the period he stays in for the rest of the volume, although after the city falls he moves on to help the Israelite tribes conquer Jericho and ultimately winds up navigating political intrigue in ancient Egypt. (In an afterword the writer justifies the sieges of Troy and Jericho potentially overlapping historically, though I feel that was probably a more reasonable conjecture upon publication in 1988 than it seems today.)

There’s a certain fanfic vibe to some of this, or perhaps teen boy wish-fulfillment, given how the muscular hero manages to attract the beautiful Helen to his bed. And while I appreciate the implication that one of Orion’s new friends will go on to become the famous blind poet, I’m not sure it’s worth the cost of so many pages rehashing what will be a familiar plot to most readers. The warrior’s own ignorance on that front is odd, too: he plainly has some memory of his prior lives, referencing advanced technology and quoting from the Shelley poem “Ozymandias,” but he doesn’t seem to have heard about any of the Greeks or Trojans beforehand or know how their legendary conflict will end. It’s also very frustrating to see him so cavalier about rape as an inevitable consequence of war, at one point even acknowledging offhand that the soldiers under his immediate command are likely engaging in that act while pillaging after a conquest. Do something about that, buddy!

What this entry does best in my opinion is expand the sci-fi worldbuilding of the series. In the first book we met Orion’s creator Ormazd, who took his name from the Zoroastrian god of light but was actually revealed as a far-future evolved / transcended human. Other beings of his ilk were alluded to, but the only one featured was the narrator’s main love interest Anya who was time-traveling along with him. Here Bova includes a whole bunch more of them, along with the confirmation that they’re the original inspirations behind the deities in every earth religion that recognizes any. The Golden One now calls himself Apollo, but also Jehovah and Amon. Anya is Athena, but also Isis. And they have a string of peers present at Troy — Zeus, Hera, Hermes, etc. — who likewise are all represented among the depictions of holy figures Orion later sees in Egypt. That’s a heady concept that rather blew my mind as a younger reader, and it remains a neat facet to build into genre fiction today.

Unfortunately, the narrative structure supporting that revelation is somewhat less impressive, especially compared to the expansive terrain of the previous tale. I still like this installment and have enjoyed revisiting it decades after my first reading, but it’s not quite dazzling enough to merit higher than 3-out-of-5 stars on the Goodreads scale.

[Content warning for fatphobia, slavery, torture, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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