I meet Catherine Wells every year at TusCon but hadn't picked up any of her books until last year, when I caught her at a signing table and bought her 'Aztec Eagle' trilogy. This is the first of them and was originally published as 'The Aztec Eagle' in 2009 with a rather amateur cover, a problem I would call solved by the 2022 edition from Jumpmaster Press. Goodreads doesn't seem to believe that this is part of a series but it ends in a way that leaves us no doubt that there will be a second book. That's 'Crystal Desert' and the third is 'Eagle Unbound'.

It's young adult science fiction, a coming-of-age story in a sci-fi environment with the lead leaving Earth on the final page. We're in the future but it's not particularly obvious because we spend the first half of the book in Mexico with a timeless story that could have been told in almost the exact same way in any one of the past six or seven decades. The lead is Enrique Aguilar and we follow his entire life from birth to the moment that he leaves the planet, as told by Xopil, a companion spirit who's summoned on the first page.

His mother is Edna, who starts the book by escaping her abusive father. He blackened her eyes for being pregnant with her first son, Diego. When she's pregnant again with Enrique, he slices up her face with a broken bottle and throws her onto the streets. She escapes homelessness by agreeing to work for Dolores at the cantina in Puerto Peñasca, cleaning in exchange for food and a bed. She hides her scars with a carnival mask. Diego and Enrique grow up hustling on the streets. While the former is lazy, the latter turns out to be a natural, partly because of natural charm but partly due to "natural psionic talent".

Those aren't his words, of course, because he's entirely uneducated at this point. They're Captain Hunter Robinson's, a Peacekeeper in the Pilot Corps who Enrique meets on the beach. Talents like his are naturals for neural implants. He asks him if he wants to fly and that gives him the drive he needs for the rest of this story. He finds his way into school, upsetting his brother who's dragged in too, and he works hard, checking in with El Capitán every year when he visits Puerto Peñasca.

Take out the psionics and this could be general fiction, for a while at least. It's interesting to see a lead character in a story like this be an almost homeless Mexican boy, something the author isn't in every way. I'm not either, but this rings true, from the obstacles thrown at Enrique by a single bad teacher to doors being closed to him because of his status. Only his strong work ethic makes the difference at some points and his connection to Robinson at one other. There's also a rather pessimistic take on internet access, which is full of costs, transfers and restrictions, and so severs access entirely to the poorest of the poor, like the Aguilars, at least outside of school, where it's controlled. Information is not free in this particular future.

And if that's a needed reminder that we are in the future, Robinson explains the history of Alpha to Enrique fifty pages in and we realise just how far. In the late twenty-first century, we stumbled onto a habitable planet and went there to start the terraforming process. Two centuries later, we sent colonists to populate the result, but they expected to form their own government, set their own rules and, of course, take the best of everything. The terraformers, who had lived there for generations and built their own society and customs were ignored and oppressed, so they started a guerrilla war that's been raging between the Alfian terraformers and the Alphan colonists.

Robinson has been there fighting for the Peacekeepers, the armed forces of the status quo, but he's just defected to the rebels and that gives this story some real teeth. Suddenly, Enrique has a protector who's now deemed a traitor. After studying so hard to become a Peacekeeper himself, now he has to question the morality of who he is and who they are, all while he's wondering who he is and what he can be. I doubt you'll be particularly shocked by how he resolves such questions but he does so and he moves through all the various stages needed to become a pilot and get off planet, to play his part on Alpha. Of course, he's the Aztec Eagle of the title, because he's of Aztec blood and his surname is Aguilar.

I don't want to go much further because that way lies spoilers, but most of the characters of note haven't shown up yet. There are worthy characters in Mexico, every bitter teacher like Sr. Cabelo matched by half a dozen others who help Enrique in their own ways. However, very few, if any, are likely to play much of a part in the two books to come. Maybe Dr. Alejandro Montoya, who plays a crucial part in Edna's struggles, might continue to have meaning. Maybe Edna herself or Diego, as the protagonist's only known family. That's still important in Mexico three hundred years into the future. But maybe not. It's a long way to Alpha and metaphorically an even longer way back.

Instead, I expect that we're going to see a lot more of Robinson, along with Karma McRae, a neat rebel leader, and peers who either welcome Enrique or don't; characters like Lyla and Miriam and Blake Rao. Wells sets a lot of things into motion with these characters and others, but she doesn't resolve many of them. That's surely for the later two books. The arc here is all Enrique's and they mostly exist here in relation to him, rather like somewhat developed human props. I look forward to seeing them develop fully into characters of their own.

Then again, we're seeing all this through the eyes of Xopil, that companion spirit I mentioned at the start of this review. It (I have no idea about gender when it comes to companion spirits) plays an entirely passive role in this book, but I can't be sure that will continue. I'm assuming that it's a character for a reason and that will surely come clear at some point. For now, I guess, we wait, as we do on a whole bundle of fronts. This works as a standalone novel, but only to a degree, telling Enrique's origin story. 'Crystal Desert' really ought to go beyond that, not just giving us the next stage in Enrique's story but fleshing out everyone else.

Fortunately, I had the foresight to pick up the whole trilogy from Wells at TusCon last year, so I'll be able to dive into that next month and 'Eagle Unbound' in May. This Aztec eagle has earned his wings. Now I want to see him soar. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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