Sometime after the 2030s, in an age of widespread economic and social global turmoil, Earth\u2019s commercial exploitation of space becomes the \u201cNext Big Thing\u201d and hope for a bright tomorrow. Charles Sorrel, an erstwhile astronaut who \u201cwashed out\u201d of the program, is eking out a living (and paying alimony) by putting together shady deals for shadier private aerospace startups. His powerful former father-in-law, senator Robert McClusky, hands Sorrel a lucrative gig: the White House\u2019s inquiry into a shattering space tragedy. Celebrity entrepreneur Ethan DeWaal funded a pioneering expedition to capture a mineral-rich asteroid and maneuver it back toward Earth for consumption, but a titanic explosion caused the deaths of all four astronauts, including charismatic Carol Mathers, the enormously popular public face of the mission who represented DeWaal\u2019s company (called Abundance). Sorrel interviews DeWaal, Mather\u2019s heartbroken wife, Jen, and others; and what at first seemed to be a tragic accident assumes a more sinister tone with the involvement of Chinese space corporation Yangshen. They claim to have detected a massive fragment of the destroyed asteroid hurtling toward Earth and plan to take control of it as their own property. Was there a lethal conspiracy in place from the outset? Chan\u2019s somewhat Chandleresque hardboiled prose is rife with Los Angeles references (\u201cit became briefly infamous late last century for being the place where an army of police cars finally arrested a retired football star driving a white Ford Bronco, but that\u2019s a subject best swept under the rug\u201d) as well as sidebars on Chinese culture and values. The novel is a satisfying blend of near-future forecast, technothriller, geopolitical crime whodunit (though the guilty parties are no great surprise), cyberpunk, and space adventure. The author\u2019s background in the entertainment industry is evidenced in the cinematic slam-bang chase finale and headlong momentum that helps to propel the material through the iffier patches.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometime after the 2030s, in an age of widespread economic and social global turmoil, Earth\u2019s commercial exploitation of space becomes the \u201cNext Big Thing\u201d and hope for a bright tomorrow. Charles Sorrel, an erstwhile astronaut who \u201cwashed out\u201d of the program, is eking out a living (and paying alimony) by putting together shady deals for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}