That’s about as long a plot introduction as I can manage without giving anything away.  Suffice to say the characters that survived God’s War are back in Infidel along with some new ones.  There’s a significant jump in time between the two and Hurley does a solid job of filling in the details.  Generally speaking the plot is a great deal smoother, eschewing the choppiness and pacing issues that plagued God’s War in the early going.  That, combined with a continuation of Hurley’s brilliantly constructed characters, authentic and fully realized world building, and pull no-punches style, makes Infidel not only a worthy addition to God’s War, but a whole sale improvement.

In the opening paragraph I compared Hurley to Joe Abercrombie and I think it’s a valid.  However, where Abercrombie has been given (perhaps unfairly) a misogynistic label at times, Hurley tackles gender head-on and gives female readers the kind of protagonist they’ve been begging for.  I can see it now in my head, all the women reading are saying what my wife would say if I said that in front her, “And what pray tell, is that Justin?”

Nyx, if she’d be written as a man, would have required the following changes:

• Removal of a few mentions to “breast binding”
• Removal of a few mentions of “womb”
• And changing pronouns from she/her to he/him

That’s pretty much the list.  My wife’s voice again, “Justin, you mean to tell me that what I want to read about is a woman who acts like a man?”  Voice in my head responds, “Careful now.”  The answer is, yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that so many speculative fiction writers portray women in archetypal gender roles.  Even when she’s rough and tough, she crumbles in the face of romance, or pines for romance, or gets left behind while her partner goes to war, or she might be a “strong” woman who doesn’t want or need anyone to make her complete.  Of course, then there are the feminist writers who just ignore the fact that men exist at all.  The last two sentences are of course gross generalizations, but I hope the point comes across that all of those are character archetypes that fit a narrative and have almost no recognizable equivalent among actual women.  As the fantasy genre has moved into this era of grittiness, male characters have moved beyond their stereotypical paradigms.  The farm boy Gary Stu is all but gone replaced instead by the tortured grunt foot soldier.  In my reading, female characters have not followed suit.

Maybe I’m way off, and women have no interest in reading about a woman like Nyx.  Somehow I think they do.  Nyx is an alcoholic and a small business owner.  She wants sex and intimacy yet can hardly bring herself to tolerate letting someone that close to her.  She’s straight, but finds sex with women easier because it doesn’t bring it it any attachment.  She’s in love with someone who loathes her – chopping off people’s heads for a living will do that to a person’s reputation.  Of course, she sort of loathes him too.

On top of all that, she’s the most capable person anyone is like to meet.  She’s driven and committed to a fault – so much so that she’ll sacrifice anyone and anything to accomplish what she thinks she has to do.  In truth, she’s a real shit head, and yet everyone around her is bent to her will.  To anyone who’s ever been in the room with a really tremendous politician, this phenomenon should be understood.  The end result?  This is a real God damn woman.  Nyx feels authentic because she is.

Back to the no.  No, women don’t want to read about a woman who acts like man.  They want to read about a woman who can fill the [gender] role a man can fill because at the end of the day that’s what women’s suffrage was all about.  Hurley understands this and has written what is in my mind one of the most honest characters I’ve ever read – anywhere.  And I haven’t even touched on Rhys, and Khos, and Inaya all of whom are equally well drawn and make choices that challenge all the preconceived notions we have about how men and women behave.

Often, I find myself reading reviews for second novels before actually reading the first to learn about whether or not it’s worth investing in an author.  To everyone who reads this – Kameron Hurley is worth investing in.  I say that with the confidence that comes from having read God’s War, critiqued it, read Infidel, and witnessed her growth as a writer while maintaining the bleeding edge that permeates every sentence she writes.  I spent a lot of time in this review talking about gender roles, and I think it’s an important and salient point in the novel, but there’s also a fantastically engrossing story too.

I strongly suggest picking up Infidel when it comes out on October 1 and if you haven’t read God’s War, what are you waiting for?  I seriously hope these novels receive the attention they deserve because this is ground breaking work and should be recognized as such in the 2012 award season.  If no one has started driving the Kameron Hurley train to the Hugo’s, consider me the conductor.

Infidel will be available in stores October 4.