Publisher's Synopsis
How far would you go to stop a war? To save a world? To save a child?
To save everything?
The year is 2075, and the people of Earth have been prevented from destroying their own planet. While protesters burn cars in the streets, Ophelia Box is recruited into a covert peacekeeping unit. Her mission is to prevent a genocide. The problem is the genocide is in the past. She becomes a player in an adventure that spans the quantum wavefunction, from the beginning to the end of time, in this universe and beyond. Her companions are soldiers of the Po, the special forces of the human galaxy. Their clever and deceptive ship is called the Water Bear.
Box had never liked rollercoasters. It wasn't just the sickening feeling of weightlessness, which welled up from the pit of her stomach and filled her with a bone-jarring emptiness. It was a rat's nest of primal horrors. The fear of heights. The fear of being cast into the abyss.
All that now changed. When the ship fell out of the Orbiter, into the gravity well of the gas-giant planet, and the lattice of seats swiveled smoothly to anticipate a change of direction, she whooped with exhilaration.
"Engaging gravity drive," said the ship, delivering its lines like a Hollywood starlet playing Chuck Yeager. There were a few moments of intense acceleration, and they were falling in a new direction.
Box laughed out loud. So, this is what I've been missing out on. Except that she was falling through the ecliptic of Aldebaran, with some kind of black-ops space soldiers, not riding on a Blackpool rollercoaster with children.
With the help of a ghost, and insects from the end of time, and a cult that's a hedge fund, our heroes go as far as it's possible to go, and save everything.
"A long time ago..." he began, and Box could see the children were rapt. They were sat in a semicircle, with the debutantes in front of the fire, and the robot Chance on the other side. Somehow, the cold of the night had receded, and they were all sitting comfortably. "...in a place called the Real, on a planet called Earth, I fought a mechanical spider."
The Water Bear is a high concept sci-fi novel and a thrilling adventure. How does an advanced civilization face an existential threat? How to intervene, without breaking what they set out to preserve?
"A Pursang holy warrior is a great military asset," said Pax. "And also, a liability."Jaasper nodded. "We've been known to change sides."
"Why?" asked Box.
"When our masters fail to be righteous."
"Who would employ you?"
"The righteous." If you read one sci-fi book this year, read this one.
