![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jacey
This is a shared world book, but you don't need to have ready any of the others. Karen always has her own particular style. She has oceans of respect for soldiers and she really lets it show, but she also gets under the skin of her characters, building compete characters from military types, much as she did in her Star Wars Imperial Commando books, and her Going Grey soon-to-be-trilogy (both highly recommended). Earth is partly wasteland. Biological warfare has cause die-back, a virulent engineered disease which has turned large parts of America and Europe into a wasteland and made Britain into and island sanctuary and Asia into a superpower determined to wipe out die-back at all costs, even if it means nuking infected land. There's no more United States and no more government, just a few isolated places trying to get by. The little farming town of Kill Line is an isolated enclave, growing enough to feed itself and Ainatio, the research station on its border, supposedly looking for a cure for die back. Recently arrived is a small camp of military types and the refugees they've saved from a city, led by Chris Montello, determined not to leave anyone behind. The co-exist peacefully with Kill Line and trade services for food. In these precarious times, it' about as good as it gets. But Ainatio isn't only researching die-back. They are reaching the culmination of a long term project to colonise a distant planet. Though the project is run by humans, it's masterminded by Solomon, an ethical AI, whose mission is to save the best of humanity and take them to the stars. The main problem is that, apart form a dozen department heads, the 1500 or so staff, don't know about the secret project. The ship taking 100 servicemen and women (in cryo) to Nomad base – which was reported lost 40 years ago – is almost there and Ainatio's current director intends to take all her staff there as well. The only problem is that she hasn't told them yet. Well, that's not the only problem. Solomon has his own ideas as to who the 'best' folks to save are. And those Pacific types have noticed a nasty case of die back in the area which means nukes. This is the first in the Nomad sequence. What's happening on Earth is interspersed with what's happening on Nomad Base. It looks as though there's going to be plenty to keep us interested in future books. Some great characters in here, including Solomon himself. Highly recommended.
