Review: Edges by Linda Nagata

From the Edge of Apocalypse:

Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization—those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties—have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars.

No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well.

With a ship’s company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

Edges is a new entry point into the classic story world of Linda Nagata’s The Nanotech Succession.

***

Edges started out reminding me of Think Like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly in which people are digitized then reinstated at a new location to allow for distant travel. In Kelly's novelette, only one version of each person is allowed. In Edges, things can be much more complex. Duplicates of individuals are not only allowed, they are central to the story.

In Edges, world building and tech take the lead over the cast of characters and it took a bit to invest in the science of the story rather than the people in it. The ship, Dragon, is as more of a character than part of the setting. I like how the processes the people go through, duplicating and merging, are central to the complexity of the plot.


I'm new to Nagata so have not read any of the books in her series The Nanotech Succession. In spite of this, I was able to keep up with what was going on in her universe without any difficulty. I didn't feel like the tale was slowed down by any back story, though I can't say if I'd read The Nanotech Succession I would think differently.

Overall, I liked Edges. It did take some time to get used to the amount of detail about the ship's workings and the transient nature if its crew. A good finish (lots of action) however I felt the initial premise of the book (finding out what is going on in the Hallowed Vasties) wasn't satisfied and will have to look to the next volume to find out since Edges is definitely more about the journey than the destination.

I received a review copy from Netgalley.