The book largely takes place on Gretia, a world under occupation by the remaining planetary powers in its system. Unusually, it's under occupation because it started a war, and then had the poor grace to lose it. The occupiers are struggling to contain a civilian population that doesn't want them there, and to rebuild a shattered economy without enabling the every people they fought a war against, and the Gretians want to get out from under the occupiers, and ideally never talk about that war business ever again. They're definitely not happy to have their administrative centres under military occupation, or to see armoured troops marching around like they own the place. Even if they, you know, do. And into that volatile mix have come a group of rebels, of schemers, who refuse to let the last war die, who refuse to accept that Gretia has changed its place in the universe, who are so embedded in the past that they refuse to look past it. And those people are out on Gretia, blowing up buildings and orchestrating massacres - to destabilise both the surviving power structures, and try to drive occupying forces off their world. They are very much not good people, with a penchant for civilian casualties, but they're probably familiar. This is Gretia, ruled by corporate cliques and aristocracies, trying very hard not to live with guilt, or think about it too much. Well, some of them. And this is the other powers, so sure in their virtue that they live in arrogance and pride, not reaching out to help those they can to build a better world, because of their own trauma and memory.
If that sounds complicated and like it's going to get bloody, well...yes. The last book ended with the antagonists deploying an orbital nuke on one of the other planets, with predictable crackdown results. And so, here we are. This is a world, a system in turmoil But it makes sense. It has the seething layers of politics and personal advancement that make it real, and it has the shining stars of duty and integrity that make it true. We're spread across familiar viewpoints, including one of the occupying troops, the heir to one of the corporate Gretian dynasties, a navy captain for one of the other powers, taking a new ship on a shakedown cruise. And then there's the lost boy, a man who spent too long in the uniform of Gretian intelligence, did some things he regrets, and is now living as quietly as he can on a space freighter, trying not to let his past (and his corporate family) overwhelm his future
They're a fantastically diverse range of people, and it's to Kloos' credit that they don't all sound the same. That the corporate knives in the dark in the Gretian glass towers are as different and as sharp as the high powered recoilless rounds pouring down on our trooper and her squad. They're all people, trying to make the best of things and do the right thing. While Kloos manages to avoid the traps I find a lot of the genre falls into (the government, it turns out, are not entirely incompetent buffoons, and we aren't all better off having some aristocrats running things, and so on), he does tend to reify duty, honour and service. That's fine actually, in context, and I appreciate it here, letting us know who our heroes are. They're unapologetically decent people, which is nice.
And they're decent people having a rough time. The action isn't unrelenting, but when it happens, it's always a shock. And that shock is often dark and bloody and kinetically charged. You can feel the tension build and seep into things, a moment of quiet turned into a bloody streetfight in a word or two. It's snappy, its gritty, and the moments between the action serve to give it room to breathe and make the meaning that keeps it embedded in the real.
In other words, this is good stuff, and if you're looking for a quick, compelling read, this is one for you.
