BooksOfTheMoon

Spin State (Spin Trilogy, #1)

By Chris Moriarty

Rating: 3 stars

Catherine Li is a UN peacekeeper who jumps between worlds, doing whatever is asked of her, and forgetting a little more of herself each time, as the quantum teleportation strips a little more of her memories while she struggles to hide her own dark past. Following an information retrieval exercise that went wrong, Li finds herself back on her homeworld, being tasked with investigating the death of the most famous physicist in human space, a woman who is Li’s genetically identical clone, and whose death is looking more and more like murder.

This is a solidly interesting space opera. It throws in quantum physics, artificial intelligence, post-human relationships and more into the pot, stirs in a murder mystery, and just enough background world-building to keep you interested.

I did find it oddly unsatisfying though. I don’t know if it was the oddly mundane resolution to the murder, the grim politics that kept Li down and the AIs that live alongside humanity on a leash or something else. The potentially awesome revelation at the end didn’t have the edge that I felt it should as well. It just felt quite muted for something that should have been world-shattering.

So lots of good ideas, but it didn’t quite gel for me.

Book details

ISBN: 9780553586244
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Year of publication: 2003

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