2026 science fiction, first of a planned series. Torian Razner has
been saving up for years to buy a starship and move her sister out of
the bad-quality air that's killing her. But she hasn't saved very
much, so she gets the weird ship.
It's very cosy. But it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense.
The only place Torian knows about where her sister Celise might be
able to recover from her illness is a particular planet, the only one
that's been terraformed (everyone else lives on space stations). Fair
enough. But apparently the only way to get her there is to buy a ship
first, because there is no such thing as a passenger liner in this
setting, or even paying for a berth on someone else's ship. (Or, you
know, sending a letter, whatever high-tech form that might take;
Torian has to travel to the planet first just to find out whether
they'll be able to move there.)
"I can fly any starship," Torian replied, praying that her
Certificate of Really Authentic Piloting from the prestigious School
of Pilot Licenses was versatile, and not the "online scam" Celise
claimed. "Why?"
There are smugglers; Torian's been working for them to save that
money. But the only law seems to be individual stations' law
enforcement. So why do you need a dedicated smuggling fleet when you
could put stuff on board the regular cargo shipments? What's that, we
never hear about any regular cargo shipments either?
This does rather fade into the background, because what this book is
about is the relationship that Torian forms with Moss, the advanced
life support system in the ship that has sat abandoned for over a
hundred years until Torian comes along to buy it. And here we get some
snarky Murderbot-esque dialogue with something that is distinctly
non-human, indeed doesn't like people very much, especially
considering how its last people left it to rot.
And that was what I wanted more of, that small local interaction.
But what Thorne wanted to give me was a gradual expansion of Torian's
group of friends and allies, and an Important Lesson about accepting
that people can change even if they were bad back in the day (frankly,
accepting all too easily for my taste, ignoring all the warning signs
that that person continues to give off). As the social scope expanded
and the gentle challenges were easily overcome I felt there was less
and less authorial interest in Moss itself, especially when it is
instantly talked out of most of the decisions it makes even when it
has good reasons for them; Moss ended up feeling to me more like the
springboard for getting Torian's story started than a protagonist in
its own right.
(Oh, and there's some very juvenile romantic pining. Not involving
Moss, at least.) (And it's not at all clear what Thorne thinks a
"solar system" is.)
It is not the book's fault that I had expected something rather
different, but what it delivered ended up, alas, not to my taste. Moss
deserves a better story than this.