The Cruel Stars, by John Birmingham (Del Rey)
The popularly
conceived optimal number of point-of-view characters changes with the times,
everything from only a single, first-person protagonist to a cast of thousands,
er, dozens. I love how multiple points of view, even those that seem to be
unrelated at the beginning, come together, and John Birmingham’s The Cruel Stars falls squarely in that
category. The story begins with a handful of characters who seem to have little
in common, except living in the same universe, in which humans have populated
planets across the galaxy: a young lieutenant in one of the space navies, a
princess of a planet’s ruling family, a curmudgeonly astroarchaeologist, and a
space pirate. When the Human Republic, long defeated and exiled for their
extreme opposition to any modification of “natural” humans – either by tech or
genetic modification – attacks, their first move is through the galactic
network linking everyone who’s logged in, essentially frying their brains and
turning them into psychotic cannibals. With the leadership and aristocracy
decimated, our disparate characters end up among the few competent people who
are unaffected. Especially moving was the ship’s digital Intellect, who walls
off and then essentially sacrifices themself, rather than spread the contagion
to their human shipmates.
This space opera
entertains endlessly with skillfully handled dramatic tension and first-rate
world building.
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