I...I dunno. I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but the looooooong digressions were maddening, I skimmed over huge sections that didn't contribute anything to the story, and I don't like needing to do that! A little firmer editorial hand would have helped this book a lot. But there are lots of interesting characters, and the central mystery was engaging enough. But honestly, I don't fully understand how it was wrapped up in the end, but whatever. It was fine. ( )

A good story, good characters and I love the homage to James White's Sector General. A distress call brings the space ambulance to a distant and strange location where two ships are discovered, a generation ship and a merchant ship, but everyone is dead or in stasis except a comely golden AI. That's how the story begins, but it rapidly becomes apparent that all is not in the least bit as it appears, the target is . . . . but I can't tell you that can I? Dr. Jens has a severe auto-immune problem and depends on her 'exo-suit' to let her function, she has personal issues beside the constant pain management, to do with loyalty and where to bestow it. She is asked to investigate a problem in the hospital itself, and it slowly becomes apparent that all is seriously not well and she has to think and feel her way through how to handle the matter. I found myself wishing to know more about how the people who survive being re-awakened from 600 years ago, in cryo for who knows how long, were going to cope, but this wasn't their story. At the end Dr. Jens internal monologue really did go on for too long. Kind of gave the ending a bit of the leaky balloon feeling. ***1/2 ( )

2606

The second book is written that you really don’t have to read the previous book set in this universe. A few things are mentioned that happened in the book and there are a few characters overlap but nothing that would leave someone confused about what is going on. The story focus on space ambulance doctor who’s crew is sent to a mayday signal. They find an old generation ship and a modern ship docked to it. The crew of the modern ship is completely incapacitated and the people on the generation ship are in a crude form of cryo with only a basic AI taking care of them. They bring some of the pods and the AI back to the hospital for treatment and quickly find the modern AIs on the station have become infected with a virus. Dr Jens is concerned for her patients, but she is quickly tapped for her old skills in law enforcement to find out who is doing this. The mystery is good and the universe is well thought out about how society has changed. There are lots of different alien species and you do get the feeling that they are aliens and not just humans in disguise.


Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
( )

It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the type of sci fi I particularly enjoy. It was a bit wordy and repetitive. Characterization was okay. The main character was a preachy and rolled around in her own head too much. ( )