Charles Stross's "visionary" (Library Journal) debut novel Singularity Sky was hailed as "a carnival of ideas" (Michael Swanwick) and sealed his reputation as the writer who "owns the cutting edge of science fiction" (James Patrick Kelly). Now he moves beyond that horizon with his stunning sequel, Iron Sunrise.
When the planet of Moscow was annihilated, its few survivors launched a counter-attack against the most likely culprit: the neighboring system of New Dresden. But New Dresden wasn't responsible, and as the deadly missiles approach their target, Rachel Mansour, agent for the interests of Old Earth, is assigned to find out who was.
And the one person who knows is a disaffected teenager who calls herself Wednesday Shadowmist. But Wednesday has no idea what she knows...
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Set in the same universe as Singularity Sky, Charles Stross's debut novel, Iron Sunrise is a sequel starring a few of the same characters and referring to the events of the previous novel. Even so, Iron Sunrise is quite easily read without reference to Singularity Sky
The world of Moscow has been destroyed, it’s sun artificially destroyed by an iron bomb, causing the iron sunrise. Stross’ description of this event is quite brilliant. There a few Muscovites remaining, escapees and those living on or travelling to other world’s. Of these, Wednesday Shadowmist, aka, Victoria Strowger stumbled across a nasty conspiracy, helped by her ‘imaginary’ friend Herman. It turns out Herman is a part of the Eschaton, the godlike AI which developed on Earth a few hundred years ago and who monitors any type of time or causality activity which may affect its own existence.
Meanwhile, are called upon to solve a serial murder case involving the ambassadors of the now-dead Moscow system. Suspicions fall on the planet of New Dresden since they were in a trade dispute with Moscow. New Dresden is the target of a cache weapons of mass destruction, the form of Moscow's last-minute (and misplaced) retaliation. Rachel must solve the murder of the ambassadors, find those responsible for destroying the star and stop the bombs from killing the 800 million plus people on New Dresden. Eventually, Rachel and company track the murders to a ship that has visited all of the crime scenes. On that ship, she meets up with Wednesday and Frank and the lethal super-race faction of the ReMastered.
Meanwhile, UN agent Rachel Mansour and Martin Springfield (both characters from Singularity Sky) are working on another problem. Before they died, the Muscovites set in motion a revenge plan, aiming slower-than-light warships against their innocent commercial rival, New Dresden. The ships can be recalled by any three surviving Muscovite ambassadors—but someone is murdering the diplomats one at a time. Unless Rachel and Martin can solve these murders, millions will die. Their investigations eventually bring them aboard the Romanov where the virtually stumble upon Wednesday and her dilemma. But the ReMastered leader, U. Portia Hoechst, is also present, and has her own ideas about how to clean up the mess in favour of the ReMastered.
Iron Sunrise is inventive science fiction, the characters are well developed and feel realistic and the plot is fast paced and well constructed. Hopefully Charles Stross will continue along this path and we will see more and better.