In this novel, cryogenics have been invented to send people to other planets, due to the unreasonably long time required to get anyplace in at sublight in this universe. The process is not ideal however, since many of the frozen colonists aren't truly asleep, but while incapable of moving, can think in a manner. The long confinement is enough to kill most of the passengers, and make many of the rest mentally unstable to some degree.
This is a long "science fiction thriller", as it truthfully says on the cover. The story starts thusly: The Earth of the future appears to be of the Blade Runner type; yellow clouds are described briefly from orbit, water is in short supply, and the government (such as it is) is a harsh and repressive one.
In an effort to extend it's power, that government spends huge amounts of resources on colonizing other planets. A colony ship is sent successfully to a planet called JV-9, but once there, the surviving colonists decide that they don't want to form something akin their old world, and create a sort of Utopian society, co-existing with the native inhabitants. They therefore don't send certain required messages back to earth that would indicate their subservience.
That said, once the travel time for light to reach earth from Jayvee 9, as the colonists call it, has expired and the required signals aren't forthcoming, a second colony ship is sent to subdue the rebelling colony. It is on this ship that the main protagonist, Marshall Walker, arrives; his thoughts during the passage are shown, exposing him as a key soldier in the brutal conflict on earth. His success appears to have been his downfall, as the government cannot have such a successful warrior around to threaten it, even if he was loyal. For this reason, he is given the task of subduing JV-9, and is quickly frozen along with many others and sent away.
The scene quickly changes to the "present". Walker is a mining shuttle pilot, breaking asteroids into manageable pieces for the mining base Hephaestus to consume. His co-pilot is Nis, one of the natives of JV-9, referred to as a "Fuzzie" to avoid the longer name.
I suppose I should get to the point soon... Ok. The story is that the "Fuzzies" lack the ability to make all but the most basic decision. Given detailed enough orders, they can accomplish most anything, but are incapable of dealing with the unexpected. Studying them is human anthropologist Dr. Elaine Bartlett, who has been sent to the mining base to examine strange materials found floating in the asteroid belt.
They find a third colony ship, and start to explore it, finding a strange presence. Here the real story starts, and I can stop my explaining and start my actual review before it becomes an essay.
Ok. Overall, very good, though there are parts of this that are scary. I read the first half of this late at night, into the morning in the living room, and got the bejeebers scared out of me twice, once by the incessant dripping of the sink, and once when a magnet decided to pick that particular minute to break and fall off the fridge. I liked the main theme of the book, which examined the power of self determination, and the ability to have power over others. The description of the natives of JV-9 was a little sketchy in my opinion, but that wasn't a big problem. A larger concern about the book was the way seemingly detailed or otherwise important characters would get bumped off, sometimes within paragraphs of each other. This was probably done to villify the antagonists, which is ok I suppose. Also, I have to say that the ending, while good, wasn't the one I felt myself hoping for, for a few reasons. After pages and pages of describing the miniscule details of battle, I thought that the end could have been slowed down a bit and expanded upon.
One of the longest books in my review page, this one stays more or less in the realm of the possible, is interesting and is deeply introspective in a way many other books don't. For the meaning especially, I think this is worthy of being read.