eBook, 452 pages
English language
Published March 7, 2019 by Gollancz.
Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants.
She thinks she knows who she is.
She is wrong.
A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology, just as Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves both on the run, and in possession of ancient, universe-changing technology.
When the authorities prove corrupt, it becomes clear that Haimey is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilisation from its potential power - and from the revolutionaries who want to use it to seed terror and war. But doing so will take her from the event horizon of the super-massive black hole at the galaxy's core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge. Along the way, she'll have to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time as …
Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants.
She thinks she knows who she is.
She is wrong.
A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology, just as Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves both on the run, and in possession of ancient, universe-changing technology.
When the authorities prove corrupt, it becomes clear that Haimey is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilisation from its potential power - and from the revolutionaries who want to use it to seed terror and war. But doing so will take her from the event horizon of the super-massive black hole at the galaxy's core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge. Along the way, she'll have to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time as well as her own lost secrets, which she will wish had remained hidden from her forever . . .
It would be unfair to call it derivative but it seems clear the author is an Ian M Banks / Culture novels fan. What makes the book interesting for me is the exploration of the question of "what if effective and precise self-regulation of brain chemistry was possible". This has interesting ripple effects on politics and the definition of personal autonomy.
