Retrograde continues The Airship Pirates Chronicles that began in The Wrath of Fate. This second installment ramps up the action, making the narrative fly by. The characters are colorful and creatively depicted, and their antics are flamboyant and heroic as they make their way through a dystopian landscape of corrupt governments and survival of the fittest against a resurgent natural world. This book ties up some loose ends from the first novel, while introducing more peril. The world is creatively imagined and populated with all sorts of people, of the biological and robotic sort. The issues addressed in this book, such as environmental destruction and artificial intelligence, are even more timely now than they were when the book was written, and they are explored in a thoughtful and thought-provoking manner. The story moves at a fast pace, and the only possible complaint is that the ending feels a bit rushed, but perhaps that has more to do with not wanting the book to be over.
Note: This book is an immediate sequel after the first book in this series, The Wrath of Fate, and it should not be read by itself.
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language: 8 religious exclamations; 18 mild obscenities; 3 religious profanities; 2 derogatory names; 6 scatological words; 2 anatomical terms; 3 f-word derivatives.
Note: the word “b–ch” is used to mean “complain” rather than in a derogatory fashion (not tallied); 3 uses of the British “bloody” (not tallied); the term “Jypsea” is used (with that misspelling), which may be offensive to some (not tallied); the word “gypsy” is used in a non-pejorative sense (not tallied).
Violence/Gore: A fight involving vehicles with deaths (not descriptive); a character is injured in an accident, with broken bones and blood described; a few reports of a death; description of mistreatment of animals related to industrial farming; characters have old scars; a ship is badly damaged in a battle; a character hits another; report of a city destroyed; a verbal threat; a fight in which characters are badly injured and a robot is destroyed; characters jump to their deaths; a few fights in which animals are killed, sometimes with graphic description; brief non-graphic description of treatment of a wound; people are branded with hot metal; characters find the corpse of a baby; a few fights without major injury; report of a death in childbirth; report of animals poisoned; a few fights in which characters and animals are graphically injured or killed, including one gory dismemberment; an unarmed old woman is shot and killed; many people are fed to wild animals; a fight with property damage; mention of a historical disaster in which people were killed; report of historical burning of witches; report of robots smashed, some of which were sentient; characters threatens each other with weapons a few times; a character is left alone with naked, bloody corpses after a fight; a woman is dragged by her hair; report of executions; a few fights in which characters, many of whom are noncombatant are killed as buildings and vehicles are destroyed; a characters has nightmares with bloody imagery; a few times that characters find dead bodies, one instance of which is an infant; a building is destroyed, resulting in many deaths; a battle in which vehicles are destroyed with many deaths; characters are dismembered by robots (not graphic).
Sex/Nudity: A man and woman consider how beautiful each other are (non-sexual); characters hold hands or flirt verbally a few times; the word “rape” is used in a non-sexual context to mean to pillage/destroy something; a woman wears revealing outfits a few times; a woman kisses a man; mention of brothels; report of a human-like robot acting as a prostitute; two women and a man kiss and caress, and it is implied that sex follows; a woman presses her naked body against another woman’s clothed body; a few instances of a man kissing a naked woman; report of a man and two women making out; mention of a woman having a crush on a man; implication that two women having sexual relations a few times; two naked women kiss; characters watch a man and his wife together as he kisses her breasts; a bloody fight in which some of the participants are naked; a sign has a lewd illustration (described not illustrated); a character has dreams in which she watches a man and woman kiss, and it is implied that they are naked.
Mature Subject Matter:
Environmental destruction; Nazism (mention); genocide; theft; piracy; animal cruelty (mentioned); overpopulation; slavery (reported); government oppression; death (parent, spouse, friend); forcible separation of children from parents; abject poverty; rioting (reported); forced sterilization (mention); lesbianism; polygamy; terrorism (reported).
Alcohol/Drug Use:
Characters drink liquor and champagne, including once while driving; beer cans litter a location; a man smokes a pipe.
