Book Review: Relkili Steel by Mara Blake

Relkili Steel opens on a planet defined entirely by its most precious resource – a mineral compound called relkili, or rse, that has shaped not only the architecture, technology, and economy of this world, but the very social order of its people.

The story begins with High Comporador Commander Pime Puja Aneall Wati, stationed on a tedious surveillance rotation watching a cab field for signs of the theft of hundreds of millions of lignes of liquid relkili from the planet’s mines and processing facilities. From this deceptively mundane opening, Mara Blake constructs a sprawling conspiracy thriller that builds steadily into something far more dangerous and morally complex than a simple heist investigation. When Puja is summoned to meet Lumiere Gobedi Mitti Elam and General Massi Ebo, and is told that approximately 700 million lignes of relkili have gone missing – enough liquid metal to cover every land mass on the entire planet – the scale of what she is walking into begins to clarify. But the theft, it turns out, is only the outermost layer of a much darker truth buried in the industrial wasteland of Sanee Moli.

One of the book’s most impressive achievements is its world-building. The planet Relkili is richly realized – a world of red-orange clay, gleaming metals in golds, silvers and reds, wrist marks that serve as communication, identification, financial and social access systems, ritual swords called sibli that denote military rank, and a political structure comprised of a Lumiere, a Confederation Council, and an oversight body called the Voice Council.

The Comporadors themselves – an elite all-female military corps descended historically from war widows and orphans – are one of Blake’s most creative inventions. Their three founding family lines, the training that few survive, the biological advantage that many carry from Lumiere bloodlines, the intricate collar rings that mark their rank, all feel organic and carefully considered. Blake also devotes a substantial portion of the narrative to the history of the nation states and the discovery of relkili by the Zoerc brothers, a historical backdrop that gives the world genuine depth, explaining why each nation occupies its particular role in the relkili supply chain – from Gilli’s vehicle manufacturing, to Kili-Ruan’s timber and construction, to Mindu’s weapons production, to Paean’s decorative arts. For readers who enjoy immersive world-building, this is a richly rewarding text.

The protagonist Puja Wati is an unusual and quietly compelling heroine. She is rigid, privately combative, and socially uncomfortable – not the warm or charismatic leader one might expect. She does not invite friendship. She nearly never smiles. Her temperament is volcanic underneath an exterior of absolute control, and Blake handles this contradiction with considerable skill.

Puja’s brief, thorny phone call to her sister Elmis about missing their mother’s birthday, her fantasy of bashing heads together as a coping mechanism during stress, her irritation at being disarmed before entering General Ebo’s office – these small moments reveal a fully realized person beneath the armor. Her relationship with General Massi Ebo is equally well drawn: a dynamic of mutual professional respect tinged with frustration and distance that transforms, by the novel’s end, into something closer to friendship, sealed with a salute that surprises even the General and a smile of genuine warmth. The last pages, where Massi watches Puja fussing over the wounded Neusian Rehola and thinks to herself that she’s going to promote her, carry an unexpected emotional resonance.

The mission structure at the heart of the book – four Comporadors stripping their technology, wiping their marks, and entering Sanee Moli undercover as common workers – gives Blake an excellent vehicle for political commentary. What the women find in Sanee Moli is not merely theft but systematic exploitation: workers murdered for trying to leave at the end of their contracts, children as young as ten working illegally in mine shafts digging for unknown colored stones, credits owed to workers disappearing into the pockets of the facility’s operators, and a sprawling infrastructure of silence enforced at gunpoint.

The scene in which Puja, suspended thirty feet up a cavern wall on a knotted rope, discovers that all five workers sorting stones below her are young girls barely twelve years old, is one of the book’s most quietly devastating moments. Her anger is suppressed – she is undercover, she cannot break character – and so she digs harder at the cavern wall, her strikes harder than necessary, channeling her fury into the rock. Blake does not dramatize this excessively. The restraint makes it land harder.

The ensemble of younger Comporadors – Issel Baal, Elinn Offri, and Merily Vuoi – are each given distinct personalities and meaningful arcs. Issel is the most experienced of the three and carries the weight of command after Puja disappears into the mines; her survival instincts and eventual partnership with the local barq owner Inari is one of the warmer threads in an otherwise tense narrative.

Elinn is the most junior and arguably the most courageous, volunteering to test the gate ahead of Issel because she reasons that if she is caught, Issel will at least know what to do. She is shot by a guard trying to escape the compound, and her death is handled with the same restraint that characterizes Blake’s best writing – Puja’s tears slide silently down her face when she is told, and she does not try to stop them. Merily’s solo march across twenty-two leagues of open country to reach Wadani and alert the General is a tremendous act of quietly heroic dedication, and her return to consciousness in the General’s medical room – panicking, demanding her boots, pulling the pouch of stones and the micro-digi from the hidden compartment – is a satisfying and well-earned narrative payoff.

The romantic thread between Puja and Rehola Harninn, the Neusian worker who ends up as her unlikely companion through the climactic escape, is handled with admirable lightness. There is nothing overwrought about it. He calls her “chief” and squints at her in amused bafflement; she kisses him once, swiftly and soundly, when she realizes they might just survive after all. Blake does not rush this into something it isn’t, and the restraint suits Puja’s character perfectly. That Massi watches the wounded Rehola reach for Puja’s hand and thinks He’s strong. He’ll need to be – is exactly the right note on which to leave them.

The subplot involving Herowa Legati, the male soldier who repeatedly petitions to become a Comporador, serves double duty as both a character study in institutional frustration and a structural reminder of why the Comporador tradition was established in the first place. He is not a villain so much as an irritant shaped by ego and ambition, and his interactions with Puja carry a satisfying sharpness. The revelation that Zimb Lok, presented early as potentially suspect because of her family connections, is actually a protected informant working for the government, is a smart piece of misdirection that recontextualizes those early scenes in a satisfying way.

The one area of the novel that will test readers’ patience is Chapter Two, which steps entirely out of the narrative to deliver a long historical account of the rise of the relkili empire, the founding Lumiere Hessta Riha Ebro, the Zoerc brothers’ discovery, and each nation state’s place in the supply chain. Blake herself is candid about this in her communications with the review community, acknowledging that she could not bring herself to break it up into smaller pieces. The candor is disarming and the material is genuinely interesting, but the shift from the gripping opening conspiracy plot to what is essentially a narrated history lesson – experienced by Puja listening to her archive in the shower – does create a noticeable momentum dip. Readers willing to settle in will find it rewarding; those expecting a sustained thriller pace may find it a test.

Taken as a whole, Relkili Steel is an impressive and ambitious opening to what promises to be a sprawling series. The world of the Star Lyathe Series is clearly vast, and Blake has populated it with a government system, a social philosophy, a military tradition, an economic structure, and a cast of characters who feel genuinely inhabited.

The conspirators are not yet caught – the Dithann angle and the corrupt council members remain unresolved, deliberately seeding the books to come – and readers invested in Puja, Massi, Issel, and Merily will have good reason to continue. There is real craft here, and a moral seriousness about the cost of institutional silence and the courage required to name what is wrong when the powerful prefer not to know. The image of a lone general who believes something is wrong, and the four soldiers she trusts to go find the truth without their marks, their weapons, or anyone knowing they are there – it is a simple premise and a quietly powerful one.

Rating: ★★★★½

Verdict: Relkili Steel by Mara Blake is a richly detailed and socially conscious science fiction debut for the Star Lyathe Series – imperfect in pacing but deeply rewarding in world-building, character, and moral weight. Mara Blake has built something genuinely worth exploring.