First published 2004
The New Republic has shut itself off from advanced technology for centuries, clinging to basic tools while the rest of humanity spreads across thousands of star systems. When a devastating information plague strikes the isolated colony, its leaders break their isolation and call Earth for help. A battle fleet races through space to mount a rescue, but the mission carries hidden purposes. Crew members pursue their own secret goals while colonists on the ground harbor their own agendas. Above them all, the Eschaton watches. This superhuman artificial intelligence emerged in the twenty-first century alongside faster-than-light travel, and it has spent four hundred years overseeing human expansion across three thousand years of time and a thousand parsecs of space. The Eschaton has formed its own plans for how this crisis should end, and its intentions may not align with human desires for survival and freedom.
Genres: science-fiction, adventure, space-opera, thriller
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, hidden-agendas
Setting: Earth, New Republic
Period: 21st Century, 400 Years in the Future
337 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Ace