Flight 404, by Simon Petrie, is a mystical sci-fi novel that requires close attention while reading. Creating a completely fictional universe is difficult, but Petrie has done a fairly credible job, including the arcane technology by which this universe works.
Charmain Mertz, nee Carlos Miyaki, is piloting the ship Peregrinator to a rendezvous with another pilot who will assume command in search of the deep-space passenger vessel Bougainvillaea, which has disappeared. For reasons that are not clear at the outset, Mertz refuses to make the rendezvous and goes off freelance. It takes some reading to realize that Mertz’s sister and family were on the missing vessel.
The story flips back and forth between Mertz’s efforts to elude pursuit and glimpses of her/his strange background, leading to a climactic ending that, thankfully, makes the difficulty in following the storyline worth it.
This is Petrie’s first novel, and a good first effort. It would have been a better read if some of the technology had been more fulsomely described, but the tension the author manages to infuse into the narrative somewhat overcomes this lack. I give Flight 404 three stars. ( )

Flight 404 by Simon Petrie is a science fictional novella set in the mid-distant future with interplanetary travel possible but not as common and easy as an intercontinental flight now.

The main character, Charmain, is piloting a small ship, one of many sent to investigate and search for the remains of a large, missing passenger liner. The main action of the plot deals with the search for the liner, both Charmain's and others' and the mystery surrounding its disappearance.

We are also treated to a lot of Charmain's backstory. It turns out that Charmain has more of a personal stake in the missing liner than she realised at the outset. And furthermore, her life as a trans person in a conservative society (before she left to become a pilot) wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. The backstory elements blend well with the main story, particularly since the Epsilon Eridani system where the missing liner is thought to be, contains the planet of her birth.

I enjoyed both the story and the physics in Flight 404. My long-time followers will probably be aware that scientific plausibility is very important to me. There were no gaffes, which made me happy and which is just as well since Petrie works, when not writing speculative fiction, in computational quantum chemistry. It was also nice to see non-trivial sociological issues — Charmain's gender identity — tackled in a hard science fictional setting. (I've seen Bujold do similar, but I don't think it's otherwise very common.)

In my edition of Flight 404 (purchased as a standalone novella from the publisher), there was also a bonus (reprint) story, "Broadwings", about a family living on Titan and the difficulties of doing so. Also enjoyable.

Flight 404 was an excellent read and I highly recommend it to all fans of science fiction. I will definitely be searching out more of Petrie's work in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )