The novel “The Third Claw of God” by Adam-Troy Castro has been published for the first time in 2009. It’s the sequel to “Emissaries from the Dead“.
Hans Bettelhine is the head of a family that for generations has been developing and producing weapons of all types used on many planets. Andrea Cort is invited on the planet Xana, the Bettelhine family head-quarter, and accepts because of the pressure from the AISource, the community of artificial intelligences she agreed to cooperate with.
Andrea Court and the Porrinyards, her assistants with whom she started a personal relationship, have just arrived at the space station from which they must pass through to go down on Xana when someone tries to kill Andrea. The murder attempt fails but when some Bettelhine family members and their guests go down to the planet in a luxurious shuttle things get worse quickly when a murder occurs.
With “The Third Claw of God” Adam-Troy Castro doesn’t just offer another science-fiction detective story but he keeps on developing the fictional universe of “Emissaries from the Dead”. Actually you can read this novel on its own since enough information are given to understand Andrea Cort’s backstory but inevitably they’re only the most important.
Reading “The Third Claw of God” after “Emissaries from the Dead” not only you can appreciate the details of Andrea Cort’s story and and the fictional universe she lives in but also the changes in the protagonist over time. The AISource’s influence, the discoveries about her past and the relationship with the Porrinyards are the most important elements that led to an evolution of the character that can be fully appreciated only by reading both novels.
“The Third Claw of God” is different from “Emissaries from the Dead”. First of all, it’s set in a place more conventional than the peculiar artificial habitat One One One of the previous novel. The structure of the detective story is the closed and isolated place in which a murder takes place – but nothing comparable to One One One – and all the present people have secrets that may be the key to the mystery.
Starting from this Agatha Christie-style detective story, Adam-Troy Castro builds a situation where there’s a sense of threat becoming stronger and stronger when the shuttle stops while descending to the planet and there’s a strong suspicion that it’s an act of sabotage.
The threat also concerns Andrea Cort, who’d never have gone on Xara if the AISource hadn’t pressured her. She has a strong aversion towards the Bettelhine family so she doesn’t trust them. She wants to know why Hans Bettelhine invited her on Xara but his children tell her that he wants to explain it in person. The Bettelhines have a friendly attitude towards her but Andrea knows that another member of the Diplomatic Corps who came on Xara in the past made a bad end because he was considered too impudent. The attempt on her life doesn’t help to curb her paranoia, especially when the situation leads her to become aware of confidential information on the Bettelhines activities.
Andrea Cort is very intelligent but the situation in which she’s involved causes a state of stress stronger and stronger so it’s hard for her to think clearly. It’s no coincidence that in “The Third Claw of God” Andrea spends much less time exposing her thoughts than in “Emissaries from the Dead” and her contacts with the AISource are more limited.
In “The Third Claw of God” there’s a constant confrontation among the various characters and from that the possible threat that some of them may pose gradually emerges. Andrea Cort also discoveres various forms of manipulation carried out in particular by the Bettelhine family and this is a basic theme of the novel, in which the detective story is an integral part of the broader science fiction plot.
In the works of Adam-Troy Castro the theme of sentient beings as marionettes is recurring and in Andrea Cort’s fictional universe manipulations reach such levels of sophistication that in comparison those made today using mass media are the stuff of amateurs.
Andrea herself realizes that she’s at the center of a subtle form of manipulation and for this reason she didn’t figure it out but someone else who knows her reputation had to ask her some specific questions on the subject. The answers to those questions are on Xara and under this point of view one might argue that Adam-Troy Castro forces that situation, also to increase the tension in Andrea. On the other hand it’s true that coincidences are a ploy often used in story telling and it’s difficult to draw the line between the plausible ones and the forced ones.
Despite some doubts about certain choices by Adam-Troy Castro, overall “The Third Claw of God” is an excellent novel that continues the development of the characters already seen in “Emissaries from the Dead” and develops well the ones introduced in this novel in a plot once again sophisticated and intriguing. Therefore I recommend it to the people who already read the previous novel and both novels to the poeple who haven’t done it yet.
