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(Solved!)Help ID a book, my memory is horribly selective.
Jaenther
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I remember this SciFi novel I read years ago. Well, sort of remember. See, I remember what seems like most of the plot, but not a single proper noun to easily search for. I'm hoping someone here can dredge up title and/or author.
The story is set in the fairly distant future, where we've colonized the solar system, genetic tinkering is widespread, the works. Of note is that sections of the population have cybernetic implants, often sharing their heads with AI assistants with names and personalities.
So the plot: Starts out describing a high-stakes, high-danger small spacecraft race where the female lead predictably proves what an awesome lunatic she is. Because of course you want what may be a borderline suicidal adrenaline junkie in charge, she gets an offer to pilot and captain an upcoming test flight of a faster than light craft, despite every other ship sent a certain distance from the solar system never returning. She, of course, agrees. There's a couple more scenes where other members of the ship are recruited, including the male lead, who appears to have been sort of hiding out and has a mysterious past.
As soon as the ship activates the ftl drive, everything goes wrong. Every AI on the ship fails, including the main flight computer and all the implant AIs. Loss of implants causes a range of effects on the crew depending on how extensively they were wired, from temporary unconsciousness to essentially comatose for the remainder of the book. They eventually discover they're in this sort of pocket dimension, where every life bearing planet has a sort of embassy set up waiting for when its species acquire ftl travel. This nexus has a bunch of different rules which the crew obviously don't know and generally discover the hard way.
That'll do for now, I'll add more when I've got time if needed.
The story is set in the fairly distant future, where we've colonized the solar system, genetic tinkering is widespread, the works. Of note is that sections of the population have cybernetic implants, often sharing their heads with AI assistants with names and personalities.
So the plot: Starts out describing a high-stakes, high-danger small spacecraft race where the female lead predictably proves what an awesome lunatic she is. Because of course you want what may be a borderline suicidal adrenaline junkie in charge, she gets an offer to pilot and captain an upcoming test flight of a faster than light craft, despite every other ship sent a certain distance from the solar system never returning. She, of course, agrees. There's a couple more scenes where other members of the ship are recruited, including the male lead, who appears to have been sort of hiding out and has a mysterious past.
As soon as the ship activates the ftl drive, everything goes wrong. Every AI on the ship fails, including the main flight computer and all the implant AIs. Loss of implants causes a range of effects on the crew depending on how extensively they were wired, from temporary unconsciousness to essentially comatose for the remainder of the book. They eventually discover they're in this sort of pocket dimension, where every life bearing planet has a sort of embassy set up waiting for when its species acquire ftl travel. This nexus has a bunch of different rules which the crew obviously don't know and generally discover the hard way.
That'll do for now, I'll add more when I've got time if needed.
Jaenther on
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It's very reminiscent of John Scalzi's Old Man's War books. I haven't read them all in the universe, so it may be it.
I'm not confident in that though, as the AI in these books don't have personalities (though the users can give the interfaces names).
Edit: Do you recall what they call the FTL drives (or perhaps any other keywords) in the books? For example, the Old Man's War drives are "skip drives"
In the nexus there were various factions. One was just one guy, the last of his kind, who ends up explaining a lot of the rules to the newly arrived humans. Another was a group that acted as agents for AI overlords that ruled their home planets, since the machines couldn't make the trip themselves. Finally, there were two groups with special powers granted by the race that originally created the nexus. One of these wore white and acted like they were a religious organization, the other were shadowy and more of a secular organization with secretive motives and identities. When granting powers to a new member, the number of which was constrained by the number of races connected to the nexus, they performed a ritual which involved a bunch of people being on hand to keep the new member from exploding from the initial power. The captain essentially wins the climactic duel at the end by using what she'd observed of the blood ritual to take an unfilled slot without actually joining either one, forcing her opponent to surrender so the power could be restrained or die with her in the explosion.
There's still more, but I think I'll leave it there, don't want to write a poorly explained synopsis of the whole book. At least, not anymore than I have already. It's just one of those things where you remember everything about it except what you want.
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