Ninth Step Station (2019)
Written by: Malka Older, Fran Wilde, Jacqueline Koyanagi, Curtis C. Chen
Genre: Science Fiction, Police Procedural
Length: the ARC I received did not have a page count attached. This is a fiction serial of ten episodes
Series: Book #1 of Ninth Step Station
Publisher: Serial Box
Disclaimer: I received a copy of Ninth Step Station for free from the publisher, Serial Box, in exchange for a honest review. This will not impact my opinion of the book.
Why I Chose It: When I first heard about Ninth Step Station, which mixes detective stories and a futuristic Japan, my mind immediately went to PsychoPass, an anime I very much enjoy. And although the results are very different, I’m still glad that I checked it out.
The premise:
A local cop. A US Peacekeeper. A divided Tokyo.
Years of disaster and conflict have left Tokyo split between great powers.
In the city of drone-enforced borders, bodymod black markets, and desperate resistance movements, US peacekeeper Emma Higashi is assigned to partner with Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Miyako Koreda.
Together, they must race to solve a series of murders that test their relationship and threaten to overturn the balance of global power. And amid the chaos, they each need to decide what they are willing to do for peace.
No spoilers!
Discussion: I have a weakness for works that blend the speculative with other genres. Just look at some of my favorite series. Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist’s History Series blends fantasy with regency romance, and Rachel Aaron’s Heartstriker Series takes fantasy creatures and plops them down in a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk future. Ninth Step Station does the same with science fiction and the police procedural.
Serial Box series are written like a television show, complete with “seasons” made of multiple episodes and written by a writer’s room. It makes sense that they would eventually explore one of television’s most popular story structures: the police procedural. I think this blending of genres is one of Ninth Step Station’s strengths. It would be far too easy to just throw in some advanced technology into a murder mystery plot and call it science fiction. Instead, the writers here take more care in their worldbuilding. In Ninth Step’s Station’s version of the future, the country of Japan has been invaded, first by North Korea and then, more devastatingly by China. When the story opens, the country is still, in large part, occupied by foreign nations. China has claimed large portions of Tokyo, and the United States is present as well, attempting to keep things under control.
The Japan of Ninth Step Station exists in sort of a holding pattern, not quite at war, but certainly not at peace. The repercussions are felt in interesting ways that impact our detective’s work. In some ways, the technology that they have access to, such as cybernetics, is far more advanced that what we see today. At the same time, thanks to the effects of war, Japan no longer has access to a thorough facial recognition database, a standard piece of tech on police procedurals.
We spend most of our time with two characters: Koreda Miyako, a hardened detective (and former Olympian), devoted to her home country of Japan, and Emma Higashi, an American peackeeper who joins the police force at Ninth Step Station to keep tabs on the Japanese. I enjoyed watching their relationship grow from one of mistrust, to a stronger bond.
I found Emma to be the more relatable out of the two detectives. This is partially since I am also an American, but also because she enters the story as an outsider, much like the reader does. I also felt that her journey was better defined that Miyako’s was, if just because it was explored in more detail. But when it comes down to it, their struggles are ultimately the same. Do they choose between their loyalties to their countries, or their partnership/jobs as detectives?
While I thoroughly enjoyed Ninth Step Station, its first season does have a few rough edges. Some of the individual episodes are stronger than the others, perhaps a natural result of being written by multiple writers. Also, there are a couple of relationships that I wish that been developed a little bit more, as there are twists in the last stories that feel robbed of some of their emotional impact as a result.
In Conclusion: Regardless of my criticisms, the first season of Ninth Step Station was a truly enjoyable read. I found it easy to get engrossed in the world building, the technology, and the charaters of Emma and Miyako. One warning though, season one of Ninth Step Station ends on a hell of a cliffhanger. I know it’s made me eager to pick up season two, but if you find that you’re sensitive to those sort of things, you may want to wait until both seasons are available to read.
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