Largely due to trilogyitis I prefer to not read books until the entire sequence to which it belongs is published. Preferably in paperback, but exceptions can be made. So when I heard that Charlie Stross wrote another post-singularity novel and the Big Guy had it in paperback I glommed it for reading on the plane to Orlando (yes, TS1 and I are in FL for the week). Turns out that Iron Sunrise is not a sequel to Singularity Sky, exactly, but it does feature the same lumbering post-human Eschaton (though not so far off in the distance as last time) and shares a major character in Rachel Mansour.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book, but it ended on such a non-conclusive note that to think another book isn’t forecoming would be to accuse Stross of letting down his readers. Which I wouldn’t do. But to check his book FAQ and see that it won’t be out until 2008 makes me want to scream; the only consolation is three years is far enough off that I can re-read and enjoy all three together.
Opening of our story: A nasty weapon destroys the star around which the planet New Moscow circles and, in short order, turns the planet itself and all residents into so much stellar dust. Way outside the system’s Oort cloud and a few years later an evacuation is in progress at a research and transit system, just ahead of the front of the explosion’s wave of killing radiation. Alienated teen with a strange invisible friend Wednesday Strowger makes one last surreptitious pass though the only home she’s really ever known and finds a murdered customs officer and strange papers, then chased for her life by uplifted security dogs.
Wednesday eventually runs into Rachel, tracking the same bad actors from different angles before bringing the plot to a satisfying conclusion. The bad actors here are a group of men and women calling themselves the ReMastered. Think master race, engineered humans, without a funny bone but having developed serious neural interface technology and who consider the Eschaton the Enemy of their unborn god. Though the scheme which launched this story is indeed resolved, this unexplained god-to-be and the fate of the ReMastered as a whole are the open threads which scream for stitching. Charlie, how can you make me wait three years to see the next bit?
recommended, heartily
BillSaysThis 