Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is an online friend.
This is a debut novel of a kind of science fiction loads of my friends are constantly (no, CONSTANTLY) telling me they do not see enough. It’s planets-and-aliens science fiction! It’s got space stations and settlements and lots of divergence/diversity of human culture and a very big universe and spaceships that think and people disagreeing about who counts as people! Adventure! Excitement! We may know that a Jedi craves not these things, but that doesn’t seem to stop the majority of my social circle.
Well, here you go, friends, here’s a one of these, and it is fun and satisfying and has an ending that leaves a lot of room without being maddeningly open. This is a book, not a chunk of story approximately book-shaped. Fergus Ferguson (under various aliases) and his allies (maybe friends? They’re working on that?) unravel mysteries, fight bad guys, and come up with plans so zany they just might work.
Or not, but then something else needs to, and that’s okay too.
I don’t want to spoil too many elements of Finder, because turning a corner and finding I was not quite where I expected to be was part of the fun of this book. I will say that there are a lot of elements that I’m used to having set up for two, three, five books later, and while there is plenty of room in this universe for interesting stories, Palmer is not hoarding her ideas. She’s giving us a fireworks-filled book. Or sometimes a tennis-ball-filled book. Um. Just go read it, okay? You’ll find out.