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Overdrawn Review
Jul. 12th, 2013 03:33 pmHey,
So I saw this Kindle Serial that looked pretty neat. Two bucks and I'd get a book in eight installments every two weeks. I finished it up and now it's available as a complete kindle book and later this month it will be out in paperback.
The book is Overdraft: The Orion Offensive by John Jackson Miller. That title may smack of military fiction and there's quite a bit of action, but this book goes in a a different direction.
The short premise is that the universe is linked by whirlibangs -- machines that shove a cargo-container-sized box through a wormhole to a receiving station. Humanity is suddenly connected to a universe that doesn't include any humanoid beings, but who are anxious to make deals and there's a complex system of trade that basically involves a trader and his personal guard who get flung around in boxes to strike bargains for their parent company back on Earth.
Jamie Sturm works for one of those parent companies. He mans a trading desk on the whirlibang station near Earth tracking what comes in and trying to figure out how markets will react to the news. He has no interest in going out into space, but he does have an interest in placing a few side-bets and manipulating a few off-book trades so that he can make a pile of money. An accident disrupts his house of cards and now he's on the hook for billions. It also means that an entire division of his company will be spun loose and the administrator won't have it. So he pairs Jamie with Bridget Yang and her team of bodyguards -- Jamie has one fiscal quarter to get out among the starts and find enough profit to cover the losses or everyone is out of a job.
So there's a lot of Odd Couple interactions between Jamie and Bridget and a lot of fish-out-of-water scenes as Jamie encounters new species and tries to figure out what they want (without pissing them off in the process). There's also a side plot with the Dominium, a mysterious alien group that's cut itself off from most of galactic society.
It's a fun read. The characters are interesting and the central sci-fi conceits drive a lot of the plot and don't get magically hand-waved away when they're inconvenient. Not terribly deep, but well-done and lots of interesting ideas on display.
I followed that up with a short piece by the same author called Human Error. This is listed as a prequel, but really it's chapter 1.5 from the main book.
Certainly some good summer sci-fi reading.
later
Tom
So I saw this Kindle Serial that looked pretty neat. Two bucks and I'd get a book in eight installments every two weeks. I finished it up and now it's available as a complete kindle book and later this month it will be out in paperback.
The book is Overdraft: The Orion Offensive by John Jackson Miller. That title may smack of military fiction and there's quite a bit of action, but this book goes in a a different direction.
The short premise is that the universe is linked by whirlibangs -- machines that shove a cargo-container-sized box through a wormhole to a receiving station. Humanity is suddenly connected to a universe that doesn't include any humanoid beings, but who are anxious to make deals and there's a complex system of trade that basically involves a trader and his personal guard who get flung around in boxes to strike bargains for their parent company back on Earth.
Jamie Sturm works for one of those parent companies. He mans a trading desk on the whirlibang station near Earth tracking what comes in and trying to figure out how markets will react to the news. He has no interest in going out into space, but he does have an interest in placing a few side-bets and manipulating a few off-book trades so that he can make a pile of money. An accident disrupts his house of cards and now he's on the hook for billions. It also means that an entire division of his company will be spun loose and the administrator won't have it. So he pairs Jamie with Bridget Yang and her team of bodyguards -- Jamie has one fiscal quarter to get out among the starts and find enough profit to cover the losses or everyone is out of a job.
So there's a lot of Odd Couple interactions between Jamie and Bridget and a lot of fish-out-of-water scenes as Jamie encounters new species and tries to figure out what they want (without pissing them off in the process). There's also a side plot with the Dominium, a mysterious alien group that's cut itself off from most of galactic society.
It's a fun read. The characters are interesting and the central sci-fi conceits drive a lot of the plot and don't get magically hand-waved away when they're inconvenient. Not terribly deep, but well-done and lots of interesting ideas on display.
I followed that up with a short piece by the same author called Human Error. This is listed as a prequel, but really it's chapter 1.5 from the main book.
Certainly some good summer sci-fi reading.
later
Tom
