2015 YA science fiction, first of a trilogy. This morning Kady broke
up with her boyfriend Ezra. But as their mining colony is invaded and
everyone has to flee for their lives, that fight starts to seem less
important.
That's not the only complication, though. The enemy is still
chasing them. There are three ships, overstrained with refugees, and
the one warship among them took heavy damage in the fight over the
colony. In particular, its AI has started to behave distinctly oddly.
Oh, and there's the aftermath of a bioweapon attack to worry about
too.
The first thing one notices about this book is its presentation,
which is largely in a "found-document" format: interview transcripts,
chat logs, and so on. Sometimes (as when there's a simple narrative
recounting what some hidden watcher after the fact is seeing on
security camera logs) this feels strained; at other times, such as
when it borrows techniques from concrete poetry, it's extremely
effective, not to say beautiful.
The science in this SF is sadly soft. Someone talks about the AI's
"persona logarithms" (maybe the writers meant "algorithms"?) Nobody
ever worries about fuel; the only problem with the ship's main drives
being off-line and having to use secondary drive is that the trip to
the nearest jump point will take longer and the enemy will catch up.
This is space travel envisioned as a sea voyage, only you don't go out
on deck much.
One virtue of the authors not caring much about the science: the
book's mercifully free of infodumps – and even so, orientation will be
absolutely no problem for habitual SF readers who are used to solving
setting-puzzles.
In terms of plot this is largely retread: Battlestar Galactica meets
mad AI meets space zombies meets lots of bad decisions by everyone (so
Battlestar Galactica again); it's not too bad, if not particularly
fresh, though sometimes it feels slightly too carefully set up to rub
in the point that sometimes there are no good choices left.
The people work rather better. Kady and Ezra are both teenagers,
clearly out of their depth, though they're doing their best; yes,
their personalities are relatively unformed and too obviously driven
by trauma from their past, but they're still interesting to read
about. Others try to help, and sometimes even have a positive effect
on the situation, though generally not. It's those people, of whom
even the villains (with one minor exception) show some degree of
depth, who make the book, and it's because of them I'll read the next
volume.
Interviewer: How did you know BeiTech were behind the attack?
Ezra Mason: I think the biggest giveaway was the huge BeiTech logo
on the warship hovering overhead.
A film adaptation is on the way, from Plan B Entertainment (the
company that ruined World War Z and is making a sequel). Oh well.
Followed by Gemina.
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