The Infinite State (The Decurion Saga book 1) by Richard Swan (book review).
The Infinite State by Richard Swan is the first novel in the Decurion Saga. This is a dystopian space opera about the impact of totalitarianism on ordinary people who are thrust, or manipulated, into trying to change things.
There are three main viewpoint characters: Katherine Fuller, Julian Yashego and Cyprian Reis. Each is affected, at considerable personal cost, by the demands of Pater Aeternus, dictator of the Decurion Empire, and his government. This comprises various power and information silos, such as the Ministry of the Interior, led by Gerolf Morita; the Councillor General Chancellery, headed by Ruben Morozov; and the Ministry of Information, run by Jarosalv Droor. People in the Empire are driven to be productive, with one example being the encouragement of women to have as many children as possible.
Katherine and her husband, Eskil, are unlucky in being unable to have children naturally. Because he is head of Lamprey Corporation ITG and a party member, they have been allowed to attempt ectogenesis. A call comes in the middle of the night telling them to come down to the clinic. There, they are told their foetus, Gabriel, has become unviable because of a rare condition causing a sudden and irreversible breakdown of the nervous system.
On returning home, Eskil decides to go into the office. That is the last time Katherine sees him. His autocruiser sinks into the Marisole River, probably because it was pushed there by the downwash from the launch of a mega-spaceship.
Katherine becomes a very rich widow who does not know what to do with herself or the money. She needs to do something worthwhile. The idea of buying a planet to colonise was planted in her mind by Morozov. It grows on her as a way of escaping the oppressive surveillance state. She certainly has enough money to do so, money that Pater Aeternus would not like to see leave the Empire. However, bit by bit, with help from old and new friends, she buys and starts colonising Gabriel. This course of action is not without repercussions.
Julian Yashego is a hypersled racer from the planet Trillia, outside the Decurion Empire. Yet, being the best in the galaxy, he is hired for a season to represent Leonis, the Empire’s capital planet. All goes well until his sled develops a problem that forces him to lose a race for the first time. It is won instead by Leonis’ former driver, Iakob Valéria, a Decurion who has his own loyal supporters. Droor puts pressure on Julian to win the next race.
Valéria blackmails Julian over having sex with another male driver while on Leonis, as this carries the death penalty. Julian asks Droor for help, which comes in the dramatic form of making him publicly date and have sex with a woman, while Droor shoots Valéria himself at point-blank range. But that is only the start of Julian’s problems with Droor, who has special plans for him.
The third viewpoint character is Inspektor Cyprian Reis of the Serious Crimes Bureau, who specialises in solving homicides. Sometimes, he is told that they are sanctioned political killings, in which case he quietly closes the file without solving the crime. He cannot afford to do otherwise, as he wants to get his children out of the government’s re-education programme, which is designed to turn them into compliant citizens of the Empire.
A murdered body turns up with its identification tags removed. The corpse is so decomposed that there is little expectation of identifying it. However, the dead man had a very rare liver disease. He is Verner Briseis, who was chief engineer of the Leonis hypersled team until he went missing shortly after Julian lost his race.
Cyprian realises this is an unnotified sanctioned political killing and that the case should be quietly closed. He finds a way to do so. His assistant, Lang, reports the irregular closure to Morita, the minister responsible for the Inspektorate. That is when Cyprian’s troubles really start.
The storylines converge around the difficulties of colonising Gabriel, and there are many.
I found myself in an unusual position with this novel. I grew up hearing the day-to-day stories of how my mother and her side of the family lived under the ruling Nazis in Germany. My reaction was that someone like Katherine would not have survived unscathed in such a regime. People who reached lofty positions in Germany knew they had to be circumspect about how they behaved in public. Katherine is already seen as a failure for not producing children in the Decurion Empire, and she knows it. Therefore, she would instinctively have been doubly careful to come across as a model citizen. As it is, she moves from one blunder to another, such as keeping an illegal propaganda leaflet in her safe at home and talking a little too rashly in a café with her friend. Despite her unusual imposed circumstances in The Infinite State, I just could not believe in her character.
Fortunately, the other two main characters, the idiot savant with a talent for piloting and the jaded, weary, fallen-from-grace detective, come across much better.
The world-building is classic space opera, and its technological ideas have been seen elsewhere in Science Fiction. It is familiar, comfortable and easily comprehended. This lets the modest Science Fiction reader focus on the characterisation and plot.
The plot is there to convey a political message: tyranny can and should be fought against because it stops people from achieving their best. This helps the characters overcome bad situations with the odds stacked against them.
The Infinite State is a blatant political treatise presented as a space opera to help lens its message, which is very pertinent to our times today.
Rosie Oliver
August 2026
(pub: Gollancz, 2026. 405-page hardback. Price: £23.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-3996-2773-3)
Check out the website: https://store.gollancz.co.uk/products/the-infinite-state