Future's Edge

It was always going to be hard not to give five stars to a book that features at least two Aliens quotes, but fortunately Powell backs them up with another of his trademark rollicking space operas. His usual focus on warmth and human connection is here (even if not all the leads are strictly human), but it's juggled with maybe the nastiest and most chilling villains he has come up with yet. There's no tonal whiplash though, just an emphasising of what's at stake if we lose. It's a thoroughly modern book, but still manages to evoke the sense of wonder that attracted me to the genre when I was a kid trawling the local library for classic SF.