The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee

Fonda Lee is best known for her Green Bone Saga – an urban fantasy epic trilogy with Asian styling. She brings more than a little bit of that sensibility into her  new standalone science fiction novel The Last Contract of Isako. But this is a very different beast, so readers looking for something that lines up more closely with the Green Bone style and content are likely to be surprised.

The Isako of the title is a high-level Samurai-for-hire on the competitive, corporate-run world of Aquilo. Aquilo was settled 500 years before by a colony from Earth but then contact was lost with the home world. The colony lives under a giant, ever expanding dome. Since the colonists found themselves on their own there has been competition between those who want to terraform the planet (a centuries-long endeavour) and those who want to try and restore contact with Earth and find somewhere more hospitable. After finding herself on the losing side of a lengthy corporate war, Isako is manoeuvred into taking one last job – to prevent a staunch terraformist from being put on the planet’s governing council.

The first half of the novel follows Isako as she tries to fulfil her mission. It fleshes out her life and her exploits and provides her view of the world and how it works. The narrative then flips to provide a very different view of events, setting up an explosive and revelatory finale.

Isako is a great central character. A grizzled and honoured veteran of the system, she still has what it takes but now suffers when she takes a beating. As a high level contractor, she has to be comfortable with a blade but also with supporting her client with complex business decisions. Along with the well described swordfights, it is Isako’s relationship with her employer “The Agency”, her clients and the broader world where the DNA of the Green Bone saga can be found. Lee has always been alive to the differentials of power, of the way that loyal servants of the various corporate factions work or are manipulated to serve different ends. And if this book is a little slow to get going it is only to ensure that readers are well enough keyed-in to this complex world to follow the twisty end game.

The Last Contract of Isako is a great standalone science fiction thriller. Lee builds a believable colony world and carefully but engagingly sets up the rules around its existence. She then drops a gun for hire into the middle of a political thriller set in this world with explosive and page-turning results.

The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee

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9.0/10