2024 SF, second of its series. The crew of the greatship Athens has
found out something about what's been going on. Now she has to make it
home.
Eventually. This is a long book at 140,000 words, and not a quick
read. Protagonist and viewpoint character Marca Nbaro continues to be
great at whatever she turns her hand to, to the extent that her
superiors actually ask her to dial back the heroism a bit (this
doesn't happen). She's juggling multiple shipboard jobs including some
very secret ones, and a romance, and even the enhanced mental
abilities granted by neural lace only go so far.
But where the first book was Nbaro learning her job and trying not to
be caught in deceptions, this one is Nbaro trying to stay alive as a
primarily trading ship has to shift to a warship footing in order to
get through everything various enemies can throw against them. This
will take not only grit and preparedness for battle but diplomacy and
politics, and if it sometimes feels implausible that Nbaro should be
involved in all these things it does at least surprise her too.
There's a side plot as Nbaro comes to realise just how much her life
has been orchestrated, and by whom, and that she really has no other
option than to accept "I did it for the best".
As in the first book, there's an appearance of crunchy technical
detail which doesn't quite hold up when you poke it closely. I have to
assume that Cameron's intended audience is more people who will be
impressed by sciency-sounding words than people who will use his
numbers to check his maths.
It's not clear at this point whether the series will continue, though
certainly some things are left unresolved here; if it does, the third
book will be quite different again.