Very quick read, despite 180 pages. I really enjoyed it, even though Levi was a little too slow on the uptake for a journalist.
3.75, rounding up to 4 :) ( )

This one has left me with a bit of a problem.

On the one hand, I loved it. The world building, the strength of the characters and the way the action unfolds is brilliantly written. Especially little details that just "finish" the whole thing, without getting bogged down.

On the other hand, Levi's virtual blindness to things going on around him is baffling. For someone to have survived what he did to remain so clueless, so naive, is hard to swallow. And that did pull me out of the story at times.

But, even though it wasn't perfect, it was still a great read. ( )

I wanted to like the story better, but it was too predictable and the main character is an idiot. (The fact that he acknowledges this himself does not really help.) I liked the other characters. It would be nice if there were a more satisfying resolution, or a sequel; I suppose it is a fine ending for the main couple, but I was quite disturbed by some of the other elements in the book and they weren't really dealt with. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that if Levi weren't an idiot and the book were longer, it could be quite good, and I wish it were. ( )

In a futuristic world Levi is a survivor: his parents were almost slaves in a mine planet and when there was a riot in the planet, first his father, then his mother and sister were killed. Levi was sent in another planet and in the end adopted by a family, but he has never forgotten what he has seen. And his only purpose now is the unveil the hidden truth the corporation which owns the mine was so good to hide. A young reporter with a personal mission, he meets Tiergan, a young doctor in a free clinic in the poorest planet in the Galaxy. Tiergan is the imagine of the devoted doctor, but he is a strange man, once passionate and full of attention, and next aloof and almost sharp. While Levi digs on his story, he finds that the story is bigger than expected and that Tiergan is involved in some way...

There is a strange dichotomy in this story: the setting is futuristic, and usually this leads to quite unbelievable events, where all is simplified by technology and where feelings sometime are detached by bodies. For example, Tiergan is a doctor, and the machinery he uses for his work are implanted in him... But this story in particularly has a very earth to earth feeling in it; the world where they live is not aseptic and detached, it smells and has a dark aurea around it, it's not shining and glittering like the shuttles that fly in the sky.

Apart from the story which starts the book, the riot in a mine planet, the loneliness of a young boy and the work of a mourning doctor who wants only to help the poorer, what gave me the feeling of reality was also the relationship between Levi and Tiergan, above all the small details. It's not much the sexual act per se, but more what happens next, how the lovers see each other, how they look at the small details of the other, like a spent penis, or the small scars in the sleeping body next to him, or the smell that pervades the room after sex.

Astrid Amara works more on the details than in the big futuristic picture and she is very good at it. Usually I'm not very fond of futuristic genre, and usually it takes me a lot to finish a book, and instead I devoured the almost 200 pages in only one night.