The Silent War
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3.9 • 18 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
When corporations go to war, standard business practice goes out the window. Astro Corporation is led by indomitable Texan Pancho Lane, Humphries Space Systems by the rich and ruthless Martin Humphries, and their fight is over nothing less than resources of the Asteroid Belt itself. As fighting escalates, the lines between commerce and politics, boardroom and bedroom, blur--and the keys to victory will include physics, nanotechnology, and cold hard cash.
As they fight it out, the lives of thousands of innocents hang in the balance, including the rock rats who make their living off the asteroids, and the inhabitants of Selene City on Earth's moon. As if matters weren't complicated enough, the shadowy Yamagata corporation sets its sights on taking advantage of other people's quarrels, and space pirate Lars Fuchs decides it's time to make good on his own personal vendetta.
It's a breakneck finale that can end only in earth's salvation--or the annihilation of all that humankind has ever accomplished in space.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With its macho posturing and stereotypical characters, including devious Japanese, Hugo-winner Bova's third book in his Asteroid Wars trilogy (after 2002's The Rock Rats and 2001's The Precipice) could just as well have been written in the 1950s as today. Megalomaniac entrepreneur Martin Humphries of Humphries Space Systems has much to be pleased about on both the business and personal level: he has survived his battle with Astro Corporation's Dan Randolph and the luscious Amanda has divorced asteroid prospector Lars Fuchs to marry him. Then the Yamagata Corporation, a new player in the economy of asteroid mining, plunges the two companies into a bloody space-war and consolidates their assets in the power vacuum while Fuchs seeks vengeance on Humphries. The framing story, about an alien artifact that is both salvation and punishment for Humphries, puts a thick icing of morality on top of a series of predictable cliffhanger episodes involving violence, suffering and death. Short chapters, expository lumps and multiple, rapidly shifting perspectives on the action make for a jerky read.
