Declan Finn
Jul 15, 2026
To begin with, Niko Landry is Captain of a family-owned and operated freighter. Like all shipping companies, he makes a lot of deals based off of what will sell better in X system over Y, and never leaving his cargo hold empty. When Niko and his crew find himself lost in space, he finds himself in the midst of a great business opportunity. After three thousand years of a human diaspora caused humans to flee Earth and being subsequently cut off from the home system, they find themselves to be the first ones to have found a way back. Since the Landry family business is private, they don't have to report anything to anyone. They're the first ones back to the home system, and therefore, the first ones to find what new resources and technology may have been developed in the last three thousand years. But Earth and the associated systems are now ruled by something called "the Censor." Karl essentially unveils a system, piece by piece, that builds into 1984 / Farenheit 451 IN SPACE, and ends with an interstellar space chase that David Weber would have been happy to have written. It feels a little like the end of On Basilik Station, only our heroes are being chased, and they don't have real weapons. Their only weapons? Physics. The only problem with this entire novel? We could have spent five pages on the crew being a bit more impressed with "This is something no one on our side has seen for thousands of years." In the book, they were all business. Five pages would've been enough. It's a minor quibble, but I have to find a flaw somewhere. In short, it's great world building. And I definitely enjoyed it. I recommend it. There's sequel bait, but there isn't a cliffhanger. So this won't cause you to throw your book against a wall.
