At some time in the not too distant future, the Earth is in crisis. Climate change has led to cataclysmic flooding, drought, hunger, and mass migrations, and a plague has killed two billion people.
In the chaos, China led the recovery and took the economic and technological lead.....
.....and the New American Union (Union) - which has become more Christian than ever - is struggling to catch up.
In this climate, the Union is trying to establish Christian colonies on distant planets. To do this, the Union has to 'lease' Chinese interstellar ships, which are controlled by Chinese engineers. The Chinese engineers have sole access to the ships' engines and inner workings, to make sure no one steals China's technological secrets.
The Union's first space settlers were sent to establish a colony called Bethesda, which is 35 years away in space-travel time. For the first ten years, things were going well on Bethesda, with messages going back and forth between Earth and the 5,000 people on the distant colony.
The apparent success of Bethesda led to additional colony ships being launched; a ship named Gabriel was headed to join Bethesda, and other ships were sent to different planets.
Before the additional ships arrived at their destinations, Bethesda went silent. The residents stopped sending messages to Earth and no one knows why. Thus the passengers on Gabriel and the other colony ships - which have now arrived at their destinations - are being kept asleep in cryo-chambers until the situation on Bethesda is resolved.
Now a rescue ship called The Samaritan has been launched to Bethesda, with Union AND international (Russian, Kenyan, Canadian) personnel. There are doctors, nurses, scientists, security experts, and so on. The Samaritan's purpose is to find out what happened on Bethesda, and to make sure the space colony is safe for more residents. As always, The Samaritan's engineers are Chinese, and they will have sole access to the 'secret' parts of the ship.
One of the passengers on The Samaritan is a Canadian space pilot named Nathalie Hart, who's second-in-command. Nathalie is running away from a scandal on Earth and mourning the death of her sister and baby niece from a serious illness.
While The Samaritan is en route to Bethesda a fire breaks out among the cryo-chambers, and several passengers, including Nathalie, are automatically awoken.
The fire is put out, but the Captain and several other passengers perish. This makes Nathalie the new Commander of The Samaritan. When Nathalie climbs back into her cryo-chamber to resume the trip to Bethesda, she sees the word 'Sabotage' (in Russian) written inside her pod.
As the story unfolds, there are flashbacks to Earth, showing what happened before The Samaritan departed. These scenes demonstrate the after-effects of the plague; the continuing medical problems on the planet; the segregation of Earth's populations into the super-rich (mostly Chinese) elite who live in sky high orbitals......
.....and the struggling masses down below; the unrest among the economically deprived; and more.
We also learn what induced Nathalie to take a job on a colony ship that wouldn't return to Earth for at least 70 years.
When The Samaritan finally arrives at Bethesda, everyone wakes up, and messages and news reports from Earth - which have taken years to reach the spaceship - report increasingly cold relations between China and the Union. This causes friction among personnel on The Samaritan, and divisive factions form. Meanwhile, Nathalie dispatches medical, scientific, and security teams to the planet surface, to figure out what happened to the original colonists.
Nathalie has a hard time as the new Commander because she lacks experience and confidence, and other crew members don't necessarily trust her to do the job. In addition, almost everyone aboard The Samaritan is keeping secrets, and there's an underlying agenda that Nathalie knew nothing about. This leads to plenty of action and adventure, and some interesting technological jibber-jabber.
I enjoy a good space opera, and I found the first two-thirds of the book compelling (if a bit derivative of other sci-fi stories). However, the last part of the novel stretched credulity too much for my taste. In any case, I appreciate the author's intentions, which is to tell the story of a person trying to do her best in a difficult situation, and to demonstrate the negative aspects of prejudice and discrimination.
The book has a helpful glossary at the end, for techno-terms and some Chinese dialogue.
This is the first book of a planned series, and I'd be curious to see what happens next.
Thanks to Netgalley, M.V. Melcer, and Storm Publishing for a copy of the book.
Rating: 3 stars
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