2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth's Moon—a history-making clandestine project—and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Riordan's mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient—enough so to have built a lost civilization.
However, arriving on site in the Delta Pavonis system, Caine discovers that the job he's been given is anything but secret or safe. With assassins and saboteurs dogging his every step, it's clear that someone doesn't want his mission to succeed. In the end, it takes the keen insights of an intelligence analyst and a matching instinct for intrigue to ferret out the truth: that humanity is neither alone in the cosmos nor safe. Earth is revealed to be the lynchpin planet in an impending struggle for interstellar dominance, a struggle into which it is being irresistibly dragged. Discovering new dangers at every turn, Riordan must now convince the powers-that-be that the only way for humanity to survive as a free species is to face the perils directly—and to fight fire with fire.
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Product Review
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Product ReviewChuck creates great characters who evolve and change in complex but consistant settings. He'sworth the time. Read this!
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Product ReviewA well-realized universe that breathes with life and human characters making decidedly human decisions.
Gannon faithfully represents the moral dilemmas intelligence communities have faced since the first spy and spymaster.
His tak on how human power blocs will respond to the knowledge we are not alone in the universe present fascinating and believable questions about that possible future for us.
He also sets a grand stage for future work in this detailed universe. I cannot wait for future installments.
As an aside in response to the first comment and review: who the hell rates based on a blurb, not the book itself?Posted on
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Product ReviewI'll wait for the 6.99 version. In the meantime: I haven't often read such a horrible blurb
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Product ReviewExcellent new space opera. The last chapter reveal wasn't built up to as well as I'd like, but the rest of it is pretty good. Very good setup for a large series.
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Product ReviewEnjoyable human characters and a neat setting with great promise of depth, very well executed. I do look forward to another book in this setting.
Caine Riordan does however have a little of the Jack Ryan about his mary sueism capacity for analysis and survival.
I would also add that some discussions do neatly compress diplomacy but they also acted as a large and hard to digest info dump in the closing chapters. It is as if there was a rush to complete presenting the world where as the previous pace was a pleasant reveal.Posted on