Kim Miller
Two boys meet, one a fast thinking savant and the other a psychopath, and as they grow they start taking over. They take over the two major crime organisations that spread their influence over several planets. And once in charge they spread their power over civic leaders, politicians, police forces. But as much as they are inter-dependent they are also suspicious of each other.
On another planet a writer is chasing down a story of multiple murders and discovers links to some dark story underneath. Out at sea a system of rigs like oil platforms are drawing a strange power source from beneath the ocean floor. It's dangerous work but one of the survivors the writer comes across is anxious to start work there.
This book takes us through the lives of a number of characters separated on different planets, but also, we later learn, separated by decades of time. Around the rig float hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stasis pods, each one holding a person in suspended animation, until they can be retrieved and their illness cured. It's a book of strange things that don't have anything to do with each other until the final chapters. And then it all starts to link up.
Apart from the frustration of Levy's decision to use silly words for certain things, religion becomes godery, computers become putery, monitors become screenery, it's an engaging mystery and an increasingly fast action story.
It also has a high body count. It starts with a fanatical religious community killing perhaps hundreds of people in a religious event, and ends with the main characters all fighting for their lives. Some of them survive. Along the way the brutality is constant as the two protagonists take over. It's not a book for the faint hearted.
Two boys meet, one a fast thinking savant and the other a psychopath, and as they grow they start taking over. They take over the two major crime organisations that spread their influence over several planets. And once in charge they spread their power over civic leaders, politicians, police forces. But as much as they are inter-dependent they are also suspicious of each other.
On another planet a writer is chasing down a story of multiple murders and discovers links to some dark story underneath. Out at sea a system of rigs like oil platforms are drawing a strange power source from beneath the ocean floor. It's dangerous work but one of the survivors the writer comes across is anxious to start work there.
This book takes us through the lives of a number of characters separated on different planets, but also, we later learn, separated by decades of time. Around the rig float hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stasis pods, each one holding a person in suspended animation, until they can be retrieved and their illness cured. It's a book of strange things that don't have anything to do with each other until the final chapters. And then it all starts to link up.
Apart from the frustration of Levy's decision to use silly words for certain things, religion becomes godery, computers become putery, monitors become screenery, it's an engaging mystery and an increasingly fast action story.
It also has a high body count. It starts with a fanatical religious community killing perhaps hundreds of people in a religious event, and ends with the main characters all fighting for their lives. Some of them survive. Along the way the brutality is constant as the two protagonists take over. It's not a book for the faint hearted.