Mutiny at Vesta

Stearns’s second space opera is heavy on rousing action scenes, political intrigue, and high AI weirdness, but the book is bogged down by predictable interpersonal dynamics and an overemphasis on corporate skulduggery. Following the events of Barbary Station, Iridian Nassir and Adda Karpe have become part of the space pirate Sloane’s crew, and they all head to Sloane’s home base of Vesta. In Sloane’s absence, Vesta has been taken over by a megacorporation, and the crew has to do the corporation’s dirty work—espionage, personnel coercion, intercorporate theft. This is not what young idealists Iridian and Adda signed on for, and it’s made more complicated by the three secretly sentient artificial intelligences who’ve followed Adda from Barbary Station for inhuman reasons of their own. The cinematic qualities of the imagery and the personable protagonists only go so far to elevate the mood of this capably written but emotionally sterile novel. (Oct.)