In the wake of the Asteroid Wars that tore across the solar system, Victor Zacharius makes his living running the ore-carrier Syracuse . With his wife and two children he plies the Asteroid Belt, hauling whatever cargo can be found. When the Syracuse stumbles into the middle of a military attack on the habitat Chrysalis, Victor flees in a control pod to draw the attacker's attention away from his family. Now, as his wife and children plunge into the far deeps of space, Victor has been rescued by the seductive Cheena Madagascar. He must do her bidding if he's to have a prayer of ever seeing his family again.
Elverda Apacheta is the solar system's greatest sculptor. The cyborg Dorn was formerly Dorik Harbin, the ruthless military commander responsible for the attack on Chrysalis. Their lives and destinies have been linked by their joint discovery of the alien artifact that had, earlier, profoundly affected industrialist Martin Humphries. Similarly transformed by the artifact's mysterious powers, Apacheta and Dorn now prowl the Belt, determined to find the bodies of the many victims of Harbin's atrocities so that they can be given proper burials.
Kao Yuan is the captain of Viking , owned by Martin Humphries, who's determined to kill Dorn and Elverda because they know too much about the artifact and its power over him. But Viking 's second-in-command, Tamara Vishinsky, appears to have the real power on board ship. When Viking catches up to Apacheta and Dorn, their confrontation begins a series of events involving them, the Zacharius family, and Martin Humphries and his son in the transformation of the human solar systemβ¦
From Publishers Weekly
Hugo-winner Bova's fourth Asteroid Wars novel (after 2004's The Silent War) is a bewildering attempt to exploit loose ends. When crazed assassin Dorik Harbin disables the spaceship Syracuse , an ore-carrier run by Victor Zacharias, Victor is forced to jettison an escape pod containing his wife and children. Unfortunately, the Zacharias family's desperate efforts to survive are lost among a host of other stories. While son Theo and daughter Angela battle incredible odds to make their way back to inhabited space, Victor steals another spaceship, Pleiades , and goes looking for his family and Syracuse. Various other characters, including Harbin, who becomes a repentant priest named Dorn, go on quests in other spaceships. Chapters are named for the spacecraft in which they take place, which helps orient readers, but Bova doesn't focus enough on the technical features of these ships or the natures of those in them to bring either to life. The action remains equally muddled. (Aug.)
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Review
"Immensely entertainingβ¦A cracking read." --SFX on The Precipice
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"Hard-chargingβ¦Ambitiously juggling elements of space opera, western, and Sophoclean drama, Bova keeps the pages turning." --Publishers Weekly on The Rock Rats
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"Vintage Bova." --Booklist on The Silent War
"Another attention-grabbing entry in a series that continues to grow in stature, scope, and complexity. Once again, Bova in top form." --Kirkus Reviews on _The Rock Rats
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"An entertaining tale of survival and suspense." --The Washington Times on _The Precipice
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"Bova gets better and better, combining plausible science with increasingly entertaining fiction." --Los Angeles Daily News