Fergus Ferguson has spent his whole life running away, yet has a peculiar knack for finding things. This makes him an ideal seeker of
stolen items across the galaxy; he can get in, grab the goods, and get out without any undue entanglements or regrets (at least, none
he'll admit to). But this latest job - reclaiming the stolen AI-driven ship Venetia's Sword from a would-be tyrannical crime boss
in the backwater collection of floating habitats called Cernekan - is nothing but undue entanglements, from the moment his interhabitat
cable car is destroyed by the thief's thugs. The explosion leads to the death of the grandmotherly Vahn matriarch, a lichen farmer whose
last act saves his life. Despite his personal rule about staying out of local troubles, the local troubles have found him - troubles
inextricably entwined with a delicate power balance on the verge of collapse, the unexplained interference of a mysterious and dangerous
alien race, and secrets long held by the old woman... and by Fergus Ferguson, whose past is catching up with him even as his future looks
more uncertain than ever.
Review
I went to the bookstore looking for something new and interesting... and, if I'm being honest, another book entirely, but the nearest
surviving Barnes and Noble has gutted their genre section to near-uselessness. So I took a chance on an impulse buy from the "New Arrivals"
section (which is larger now than their entire science fiction and fantasy area... and they wonder why people turn to internet options.
But, I digress...). It was pitched by the staff recommendation as "Star Wars meets Indiana Jones", which isn't quite accurate. It's more of
an homage to older space adventures, with reasonably hard science but also more than enough room for action, danger, and just a hint of the
inexplicable and alien at the fringes. Things kick off fairly quickly; by the end of the first chapter we have a rough sketch of our story,
our hero, and our setting, rounded out by our first explosion. The tale keeps moving fairly well from then on out, as Fergus keeps getting
himself into more trouble and digging himself in deeper with the power play/open war that's just been sparked in Cernekan, in no small part
due to his arrival (or, rather, the balance-tipping ship he was sent to repossess). This isn't his first dance with civil war, but the last
one left scars and regrets he swore never to repeat... only the universe apparently doesn't care what he swore, and sometimes the only way
out of danger is right through the heart of it. Around Fergus grows a network of allies and enemies (he tries not to entangle himself enough
for true friends, just contacts, but ends up with friends anyway), which sometimes gets a bit tangled and convoluted. The mystery aliens
insert themselves into the tale at a key moment. If anything feels off-step in this story, it's them, though I expect that's because their
actions and reasoning will be further explained (insomuch as they can be) in future installments. The rest of the book, however, is solid
adrenaline-rush old-school science fiction action, establishing a universe and main character more than sturdy enough to carry further
adventures.
As a closing note, I read this with just a slight twist of sadness. This is the exact kind of book that, some years ago, I would've handed
over to my father as soon as I'd finished; as an old-time science fiction fan, he would've eaten it up. Dementia is a cruel disease,
indeed...
Fergus Ferguson has a knack for finding stolen things - and finding trouble - wherever he goes across the galaxy, but there's one item
he's been avoiding for far too long: the motorcycle he stole at age 15 when he ran away from his home in Scotland and fled to the stars. He
keeps meaning to return it to his cousin and make amends, but can't seem to get up the courage to face the place that left him so
heartbroken. Now, having more or less recovered from the almost-deadly excitement on the distant deep-space habitation of Cernee, he
realizes he can't put it off anymore. He says goodbye to his friends, the eccentric Shipbuilders of Pluto, and makes the trek sunward to
Earth and a dusty storage unit... only to find that the motorcycle is long gone, replaced by crates containing stolen art. The next thing he
finds is a retired New York City police detective accusing him of the theft and associated murders - just when Fergus gets word that the
Pluto shipyard has been attacked. With the detective as a determined yet distrustful stowaway, Fergus heads back to space, and plunges into
a plot that takes him deep beneath the ice of Saturn's ocean moon Enceladus, where he might find his missing friends from the shipyard... if
he doesn't find a grisly, watery grave first.
Review
Like the first installment of Fergus Ferguson's adventures, Driving the Deep hearkens back to old-school space adventures, if
with reasonably hard science behind it. It follows through on some themes from that book, too, as Fergus has come to realize that the galaxy
just isn't big enough to keep running away from his painful past, not to mention dealing with the fallout of his peculiar alien encounter and
its aftereffects. It brings back the AI (or rather SI - "simulated intelligence") ship Venetia's Sword, whose theft kicked off the
previous adventure. The pursuit of the Pluto attackers to Enceladus holds a personal horror for Fergus; his father committed suicide by
drowning right in front of the boy, a big part of why he ran away from home, so finding himself immersed beneath countless kilometers of
crushing water is hardly a pleasant experience. Palmer creates an interesting and horror-tinged world beneath the moon's icy crust, one where
the pressure of the deep alone is enough to drive many to madness even without dark conspiracies and killers and secret plots piling on the
stress. As before, he finds allies and enemies in unexpected places, with an abundance of luck both good and ill, and after a fair bit of
chaos and close calls, most everything wraps up by the last pages (save a few stray threads for the third installment to pick up on). Things
slow down a bit while the technical challenges and culture of Enceladus are explained, but overall it's as fast-paced and adventurous as the
previous volume, and just as well recommended.
Since running away from home at fifteen, Scotsman Fergus Ferguson has traveled to numerous worlds, met a wide variety of aliens, endured
a number of escapes, and found all manner of missing items for various clients, but the one thing he never counted on finding was a kid
sister he never even knew he had. On his trip back to Earth to tie up loose ends, Fergus learns about Isla, now a teen not much older than
he was when he fled Earth - a teen who has grown up practically idolizing her brother's adventurous lifestyle, so different from the future
envisioned for her by relatives. Maybe if he sticks around Scotland this time and spends some time with her, he can discourage her from
making the same mistakes that led him to his risky existence (and to numerous scars, not to mention the peculiar "gift" by even more
peculiar aliens that gives him unusual energy abilities)... but once a finder, always a finder.
He was just supposed to be finding some lost sheep, a favor more than a proper job, when he stumbles upon an unusual metal fragment - a
fragment that seems oddly active to his energy sense. All of the sudden, a lot of people are very, very interested in him, the kind of
people who skulk in surveillance vans and kick down doors to get what they're after. On the run with Isla (who of course won't be left
behind), Fergus must reach out to friends old and new as he struggles to grasp just what he's stumbled into and how he's going to get out
of it with his increasingly-patchwork skin in tact... and, oh, yeah, without that little bit of metal driving him insane and potentially
destroying the solar system, not necessarily in that order.
Review
The third installment of the Finder Chronicles maintains the active pacing and adventurous, occasionally humorous tone of the previous
books, presenting another seat-of-the-pants life-and-death outing for Fergus that once again sees him at just the right place and time
(or wrong place and time) to save or endanger entire worlds. It builds on events from the first two books, with several cameos and
callbacks, even as Fergus himself is growing and changing through his adventures. The discovery of a sister feels a bit like a chance to
leave some sort of a legacy, as well as a chance for a secondhand do-over - if he can convince Isla to stick to her university studies
and stay planetside, at least. But, naturally, a young girl already chafing at stagnant life in a small Scottish town - one related to
Fergus, no less - isn't going to be satisfied with a safe and comfortable little life, not when there's an entire galaxy out there to see
and aliens to meet and adventures to be had... and not when the stakes are the survival of Earth at least and the rest of the solar system
at most. She manages to not be deadweight, though she does have a lot to learn about the world beyond the Scottish pub where she's been
raised, and what being a finder/freelance adventurer truly entails beyond the daydreams of a lonely girl. It's a messy, dirty, often
bloody business that skirts the gray areas of legality (when it doesn't outright jump into the shadows), which sounds a lot more fun than
it truly is when there are professionals with guns hot on one's heels. By the time the truth gets through to Isla, though, she's in too
deep to get out... and she already recognizes that there are bigger issues at foot than whether she's having fun. Fergus, meanwhile,
becomes increasingly convinced that he can't keep this lifestyle up forever if he wants to live a natural lifespan, even though finding
things (and solving life-and-death problems by the seat of his exosuit) is so much a part of him he doesn't even know what he'd do
without it. That may be little more than a philosophical question, though, if he can't figure out the alien metal fragments, who wants
them so desperately, and how to stop them from reassembling themselves into Something Very Bad... a problem made more complicated by his
alien "gift" that interacts in a most disturbing manner with the dangerous artifacts. Problems and enemies keep ratcheting up, building to
an intense and somewhat emotional climax - and then on to an ending that's close to a cliffhanger. Honestly, it almost shaved a bit off
the rating, to be left in that manner, but the rest of the story kept it afloat at the same level as the previous Finder books, so I gave
it the same rating, on the (hopefully not naïve) theory that there will, indeed, be a fourth installment and proper closure if/when the
series comes to an end.
