I received my copy of Queen & Country: A Gentleman's Game around 6 p.m., and put it down about five hours later, having read it cover to cover without much of an interruption. This is how all of Rucka's novels read, as page-turners so intense and engaging that you can't even fathom putting them down until you're finished, even if it's 4 a.m. and you've got to go to work in two hours. Queen & Country is easily the strongest of Rucka's comics work, but the novel exceeds the high quality standards of that series, as Rucka really makes use of the prose format to explore these characters in deeper detail and to tell a multi-layered and even more complex plot with plenty of twists and turns. If you're a Queen & Country fan, then you probably already have this novel in your house, and if you're not a Queen & Country fan, this novel will turn you into one.
While Rucka has done a pretty exceptional job in the monthly comic series Queen & Country of getting us inside the characters' heads and telling realistic, well-researched spy fiction, it's nothing compared to what he's got here in the novel. This story, if broken down into the comics series, would probably have encompassed at least three or four long story arcs, and would have taken over a year to be told, and given that some of the strength of the story is how deeply we are into a few of the characters' heads, I don't know that it would have worked as well even then. Rucka has done a terrific job of taking the concept, which originated in the comics medium, and transitioning it to the prose medium, focusing on the strengths of prose to make the book work. This is not just a Queen & Country script without an artist to illustrate it, this is a story that really could only have been told in a novel.
There are so many twists and turns, and so much unpredictability, that I hate to spoil any of them, and I'll be as careful as possible in revealing the story. But the story begins when a terrorist attack strikes London, one that is as psychologically devastating as 9/11 was for America, if not carrying as high a body count. Retaliation becomes a priority for the government, which puts the Minders in the hotseat, and the resulting public and government pressure increases the already-tense relations between Paul Crocker, head of these field agents, and the various other agencies and governmental ministers that he answers to and works with. Rucka has done phenomenal things with the political machinations of espionage in the comics, but the stakes are higher here, and it's fascinating to see Paul and Tara Chace bump heads with David Kinney, Donald Weldon and Sir Frances Barclay, knowing how they've interacted before. It's also a tad frustrating, as Rucka does not provide his characters with easy answers, nor do the "good guys" (if such terms really applied to Queen & Country) ever get a clean win. There are always compromises, and there are more than a few moments in this book when the reader will wish someone had punched out the smug bureaucrat, even while recognizing that it's utterly realistic that nobody did.
This might make it sound like you need to be an expert on Queen & Country's characters and relationships to enjoy the novel, but that is certainly not the case. While there's a real joy for the comics fans in seeing all of these characters relate in new and interesting ways (the appearance of Tom Wallace, and his role in the story, was a particular highlight), Rucka explains who they are and what their history is quite clearly. He even inserts references to most of the cases covered in the trade paperbacks, covering them neatly and succintly and making them sound like pretty appealing stories in their own right. The comic geek in me almost expected to see asterisks and little boxes saying "As seen in Queen & Country: Operation Broken Ground!"
The real strength of the novel as compared to the comics, in addition to the ability to tell a story of greater complexity and length, is that it lets Rucka really put the reader into the characters' heads. Rucka presents his storytelling from a third-person point-of-view, but the way we are privy to only select characters' emotions and thoughts makes it feel like the more intimate first-person. It's fascinating to see little insights into the home lives of Tara or Paul Crocker, but some of the most effective sequences don't look in on the protagonists at all. Rucka tells a significant amount of the story from the point-of-view of fanatical terrorists, and it is some of the most terrifying reading I've done. His presentation of the way the terrorists dehumanize their targets, the way they justify their actions to themselves without thinking there's any justification, sent chills up my spine and raised once again the furious anger with no outlet that I felt in the wake of 9/11. The opening sequence, showing the terrorist attack from the point-of-view of one of the terrorists, is incredibly powerful, and the story of a young man making his way through terrorist training even moreso.
As I read the novel, I also found myself wishing that Rucka had time for (and that the industry would support) more Queen & Country comics. I would love to read more tales of the two MOSSAD agents introduced here, and how their spy service differs from that of the British. Ditto for a "God & Country" spinoff examining Angela Cheng and her compatriots at the CIA, done with the same detail and research that Rucka has clearly put into Queen & Country. There's an expansive cast at work in this novel, utilizing most of the major players from Queen & Country the comics series (even a couple of the dead ones have influence on the stories), and Rucka really demonstrates his strength at developing characters along with his strengths at plotting.
There are a couple of items of concern for me, although neither of them are major enough to make this anything less than a must-buy. One is that there are story elements here that will absolutely impact on the comics series, and thus anyone who reads the comics really has to buy the novel or they're going to miss out on what is arguably the most important Queen & Country story yet. Fortunately, no Queen & Country fan could possibly complain about this, but unfortunately, the book really could have used more of a marketing push, as most comics stores won't have ordered it (because it wasn't really highlighted in Previews, and in fact might not even have been solicited through it) and several book stores don't know what to do with it because they think it's just another Queen & Country graphic novel (the Barnes & Nobles here in Austin didn't have any on their shelves until it was pointed out to them what it was).
My other concern is one that is almost impossible to discuss without spoiling a major shocker in the book, and so I won't really be able to fully articulate it. I will say that while Tara is seen to punish herself for her failings, it seems that Rucka is indicating a sort of karma where she really is punished for everything she has (and hasn't) done, and the tragedy that befalls her in this issue is pushing the character's luck in one area of her life into something that is almost going beyond coincidence and into obviously-scripted territory. Again, I can't fully express it, or even really hint at it, without giving it away, but I felt like it was more of a gut-punch than the book needed, and could begin bordering on melodrama territory if it keeps happening.
However, the event is so emotionally affecting, and so believable in context of this single story, that it's hardly a major flaw in the work. Rucka clearly loves putting his character through the wringer, and she never has anything in the way of easy, or even certain, victories, and this is another aspect of that writing style, as well as being another shocking twist. The story keeps twisting and turning until the end, and it is probably the best Queen & Country tale that I have read. 10/10
