Neptune's Brood
Stross’ novel Saturn’s Children (2008) took place in a twenty-third century devoid of humans but replete with androids, including a professional sexual companion with no more biological customers left to service. This equally inventive follow-up occupies the same universe, albeit thousands of years later, featuring a new metahuman protagonist named Krina Alizond-114, whose consciousness can be beamed across light-years of space into newly fabricated bodies. When her sister, Ana, unaccountably goes missing, Krina sets out for Ana’s last known home base—the water world of Shin-Tethys—but she doesn’t get far before her ship is seized by pirates. While their captain, Count Rudi, chivalrously offers to ferry Krina to Shin-Tethys in order to meet Ana, his real motive is shadier: capturing a fabled and powerful monetary instrument called the Atlantis Carnet, of which Ana and Krina are part-owners. Readers new to Stross’ densely packed prose and profusion of ideas may want to switch to lighter fare. His many fans, however, will find the author’s usual wealth of futuristic scenarios and technological extrapolation enthralling. --Carl Hays