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A review by colossal
Empire of Dust by Jacey Bedford
4.0
Highly enjoyable science fiction adventure with romantic elements. In fact, compulsively readable.
Cara is a Psi-1 telepath (interstellar range at that level) who is on the run from her former lover Ari. Ari is a corrupt official of one of the enormous corporate entities that seem to have all the power in this future. She comes across Rakesh Benjamin, a Psi-1 navigator who rescues her from a nasty situation. In an effort to lay low they are signed up to spend a year on a colony planet with a large group of psi-hating luddites. That's dangerous enough, but the colony leader is an unbalanced incredibly charismatic man with paranoid tendencies.
There's a large cast of supporting characters and there's some nuance there. The colony leader is one of the putative villains, but he's a bit more complex than that. The supporting cast of Benjamin's Psi-Tech team are excellent as well, as is the young and stupid colonist Max Constant who is one of the point of view characters. Cara herself is an interesting character as she struggles with tampering in her brain from her time with Ari, something that's well written here. Also the world-building, both in the FPA worlds and on the colony world is quite excellent. Lots of crunchy little details and it all seems to be well thought out, from the basic gist of the platinum economy to the differing social mores across the different locale.
The book also resolves itself well while leaving plenty of meat for a sequel.
So that's all that's great with the book. It has two main problems though, the first of which is that it's very long for what it is. And there's stuff that could obviously come out. The tendency for UK SF though is towards huge self-indulgent tomes as in [a:Peter F. Hamilton|25375|Peter F. Hamilton|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1235123752p2/25375.jpg] or [a:Gary Gibson|1442754|Gary Gibson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1343764666p2/1442754.jpg] (both of which are good comparisons for this book) so I don't expect it's out of place. The other more serious flaw, is the central coincidence of Cara and Benjamin meeting. It would be a massive spoiler to explain that coincidence, but it's probably not too much to say that they have similar and slightly overlapping histories.
Ultimately, I forgive those things, because it's a cracking good book and I'm really looking forward to the sequel.
Cara is a Psi-1 telepath (interstellar range at that level) who is on the run from her former lover Ari. Ari is a corrupt official of one of the enormous corporate entities that seem to have all the power in this future. She comes across Rakesh Benjamin, a Psi-1 navigator who rescues her from a nasty situation. In an effort to lay low they are signed up to spend a year on a colony planet with a large group of psi-hating luddites. That's dangerous enough, but the colony leader is an unbalanced incredibly charismatic man with paranoid tendencies.
There's a large cast of supporting characters and there's some nuance there. The colony leader is one of the putative villains, but he's a bit more complex than that. The supporting cast of Benjamin's Psi-Tech team are excellent as well, as is the young and stupid colonist Max Constant who is one of the point of view characters. Cara herself is an interesting character as she struggles with tampering in her brain from her time with Ari, something that's well written here. Also the world-building, both in the FPA worlds and on the colony world is quite excellent. Lots of crunchy little details and it all seems to be well thought out, from the basic gist of the platinum economy to the differing social mores across the different locale.
The book also resolves itself well while leaving plenty of meat for a sequel.
Spoiler
There's 30,000 frozen settlers out there somewhere that are going to need to be found, and what exactly happens when you give a criminal organization the sort of power that a planet full of a critical mineral resource represents.So that's all that's great with the book. It has two main problems though, the first of which is that it's very long for what it is. And there's stuff that could obviously come out. The tendency for UK SF though is towards huge self-indulgent tomes as in [a:Peter F. Hamilton|25375|Peter F. Hamilton|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1235123752p2/25375.jpg] or [a:Gary Gibson|1442754|Gary Gibson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1343764666p2/1442754.jpg] (both of which are good comparisons for this book) so I don't expect it's out of place. The other more serious flaw, is the central coincidence of Cara and Benjamin meeting. It would be a massive spoiler to explain that coincidence, but it's probably not too much to say that they have similar and slightly overlapping histories.
Ultimately, I forgive those things, because it's a cracking good book and I'm really looking forward to the sequel.