This was a good old-fashioned space opera, full of intrigue, aliens, cool bits of technology, and all the space battles you could wish for.
The main part of the story centers on the crew of a human cruiser (part of the Combined Corporate Defense Force - the real power of humanity in space is all with transstellar corporations) on patrol in a remote system. It’s been 70 years since the war ended with the insectoid Xre, but the Xre are poking around near the borders of this particular system as defined by the peace treaty. This starts out as a game of cat-and-mouse, but the threat of escalation (and a resumption of the war) is clear. We don’t just get the human perspective on this; we also get interludes from the Xre themselves, so we see how both sides are viewing the not-quite-conflict.
The secondary plot line is centered on the CEO of one of the huge transstellar corporations - specifically, the one that’s got interests in the system the aforementioned cruiser is guarding. His company is dealing with an outbreak of a new super plague on one of their most lucrative mining colonies, he’s starting to hear rumors of the Xre incursion, and there are hints that there are more things in play than he suspects.
The series of encounters between the humans and the Xre are as kick-ass a bunch of space battles as I’ve ever read. Great emphasis is placed on stealth and the difficulties of finding a small target in the vastness of space, and on the time-lag when the ship you’re trying to spot might be several light-hours away. The science is pretty hard (excepting, of course, the FTL drives) and the weapons are all cleverly deployed. The captain of the cruiser is awesome, her crew is awesome, it’s all awesome.
The corporate side of things is decently fun, but not as awesome. Part of the problem is simply the fact that Tomlinson made the POV here the CEO of a mega-corporation. Poor guy is starting out in a deep hole as far as sympathy or empathy goes, and I can’t say I ever grew to like him. He doesn’t seem to be a *bad guy*, but “energetic and clever businessman focused on making his company succeed” isn’t an archetype I’m really going to go for right now. Luckily, there’s the epidemiologist in charge of the super plague who I liked quite a lot.
But all in all, this was tons of fun and I burned through it in like 2 days. I don’t see any news about the sequel, but I’m looking forward to it.
Comments