I'm really glad that I suggested to the Ottawa Public Library that they buy this because it lived up to the promise of the first three novels in the series.
Without giving spoilers, it's fair to say that we learn more about what the Asiig are up to with Fergus.
The description for this book and Suzanne Palmer's own words say this is the final book in the series, but I hope she changes her mind. I understand nobody is going to publish a book where Fergus just goes about a quiet life having whiskies with his cousin, bantering with his sister and tending his cat, but it would still be nice to know what happens with the artificial intelligence things and to spend some more time with the weird aliens and semi-sentient space ships.
I didn't think we were getting another Fergus Ferguson book, as the last one ended in a way that felt much more conclusively than the others. It turns out this is due to the first three being a book deal with uncertainty around future books, and this one ends with an easy hook for the next one, so I'm crossing my fingers for more.
If you haven't read any of these books, I feel like Fergus fills a similar role to Miles Vorkosigan. He exists as an element of chaos. You add him into a small trap for a few people and ten minutes later he's finagled his way into capturing a starship. They're not the same characters at all--Fergus is definitely angrier, less gregarious, and more space MacGyver than Miles is--but there's a similar delightful escalation to everything they both get involved with.
This book was a lot of …
I didn't think we were getting another Fergus Ferguson book, as the last one ended in a way that felt much more conclusively than the others. It turns out this is due to the first three being a book deal with uncertainty around future books, and this one ends with an easy hook for the next one, so I'm crossing my fingers for more.
If you haven't read any of these books, I feel like Fergus fills a similar role to Miles Vorkosigan. He exists as an element of chaos. You add him into a small trap for a few people and ten minutes later he's finagled his way into capturing a starship. They're not the same characters at all--Fergus is definitely angrier, less gregarious, and more space MacGyver than Miles is--but there's a similar delightful escalation to everything they both get involved with.
This book was a lot of fun. The vast majority of this book is spent with new characters among a pirate crew; I am a huge sucker for spaceship crew dynamic stories and so I ate this up. Also, I forgot just how funny Suzanne Palmer's writing is and there were quite a few lines that made me laugh. If I had any complaints, it's that I'm generally less excited about deus ex Asiig and would really just prefer more localized Fergus shenanigans, but their intervention here also answers a lot of questions.
In general, these books feel like one off action adventures (and this one especially feels like a side adventure) with enough worldbuilding depth to keep me intrigued; and, this one manages to bring back touchpoints from all of the previous books in ways that felt really satisfying too.
Hopefully, some day Fergus can figure out where home is.
