In this oddly old-fashioned and low-key space opera from Philip K. Dick Award–winner Russo (Ship of Fools
), Cale Alexandros, the heir to a great mercantile family who's abandoned at age five on a backwater planet, grows up among savages. Barely surviving into adulthood, Cale makes his way out of the wasteland to the planet's one civilized city, where he discovers the Resurrectionists, a cult dedicated to unearthing the ancient technologies of an extinct alien race, and begins to understand the meaning of the Rosetta Codex, a strange artifact he himself discovered in the wasteland. Cale must also deal with the mysterious Blackburn and his employers, the Borg-like Sarakheen, who want the artifact for themselves. After regaining control of the Alexandros family holdings on another planet, Cale sets off on a journey that will transform the galaxy, his goal nothing less than the resurrection of the ancient aliens who created the codex. Russo's landscapes and technologies are nicely alien, but readers will have trouble attaching to his somewhat flat protagonist, whose motives for bringing the aliens back to life remain unclear. (Dec.)
