When attending a Newcastle murder scene, Detective Sidney Hurst finds a dead North family clone.
Yet none have been reported missing. And in 2122, twenty years ago,
a North clone billionaire was horrifically murdered in the same manner on the tropical planet of St Libra.
So, if the murderer is still at large, was Angela Tramelo wrongly convicted?
She never wavered under interrogation, claiming she alone survived an alien attack.
Investigating this potential alien threat now becomes the Human Defence Agency’s top priority.
St Libran bio-fuel is the lifeblood of Earth’s economy and must be secured.
A vast expedition is mounted via the Newcastle gateway,
and experts are dispatched to the planet – with Angela Tramelo, grudgingly released from prison.
But the expedition is cut off deep within St Libra’s rainforests, and the murders begin.
Angela insists it’s the alien, but her new colleagues aren’t sure.
Did she see an alien, or does she have other reasons for being on St Libra?
This is part future police procedural, part Predator,
part human colonisation via stargates, part genetic bio-mods, and part lots of other SFnal tropes.
That’s a lot of parts: at 1087 pages, this could justly claim
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Newcastle is home to the North bioil corporation, and the Gateway to St. Libra,
a planet with weird native vegetation, orbiting Sirius,
where 60% of Earth’s bioil is manufactured.
Detective Sid Hurst is called in to investigate an impossible murder:
one of the famous and influential North clones has turned up dead in the Tyne,
yet no North close is missing.
The investigation seems linked to a similar murder on St. Libra 20 years earlier.
Could mass murder Angela Tramelo actually be innocent?
Was it really an alien?
With humanity already under attack from the remorseless Zanthswarm,
a possibility of second alien aggressor needs to be taken very seriously.
As the tale progresses, we learn how these events are connected,
along with a lot of other backstory.
There is a lot of frustrating police investigation,
a lot of frustrating hacking through dense jungle,
and a lot of frustrating politicking.
This all leads to a somewhat slow read: although building up a dense and convincing back story,
the first “wow” factor doesn’t occur until well over 500 pages in.
Events then start growing and accelerating, to a massive conclusion.
Yet despite being heavy going in places (I really began to live
Sid’s frustration with the taxi backtracking), this has lots of nice ideas, some well-developed, some under-developed.
Elston’s religion, Sirius’ history, the frankly implausible evolutionary status of the biology of St Libra,
could have done with more exploration. More? when the book is already over a kilo-page? Well, yes.
Some of the less SFnal subplots (yes, Ian, I’m looking at you, among others) could have been sacrificed
to exploring these issues. Or just sacrificed altogether.
However, this is minor quibbling.
Even when the plot is progressing glacially, the background is interesting.
The flashbacks, filing in Angela’s backstory, are carefully arranged to mislead.
And when things do start moving, there’s plenty of action.
I particularly like the idea that even with almost global surveillance,
the police simply don’t have the resources to track down any and every crime,
and even when they get the resources, the sheer amount of data, noisy and corrupt in places,
requires a massive amount of effort to process.
So, in the usual Hamilton way, lots of ideas woven together to produce a dense and believable future.
