Rafe is accepted as an elite webber (a navigator) on a starship but there is a mystery about his past.

The slices of life aboard the starship were well done, but the wider world-building wasn't quite as well illuminated, which meant the background mystery and politicking wasn't as enthralling as it had the potential to be. ( )

Quite a good book, with a surprisingly modern feel for something written in the eighties.
One of the main characters is an older woman who is a commander of a space ship. Several others are gay men. That isn't a common thing in SF even now. On top of that, it's well done. The book is not about diversity, but it has a diverse backdrop.
The personalities are great, and interact nicely. There is a clear feeling of family and loyalty aboard the ship, which I always enjoy.
I liked the story and technology as well, although I would have liked to see a bit more of the webbing, and I would have like to know more about the old web at the end.
Overall, very good. ( )

A few first-novel hiccups, but this was fun. The story just kept getting more complex with the chances for success getting narrower. The complicated world is fed into the story as needed with just a few document-style inserts.

Normally, interior monologue drives me nuts, but it was the right technique to use in parts of this book. The character doesn't know enough, yet, to know who to share the information with. Will it do more harm?

I'm delighted to hear that Helen Wright is writing again. ( )

The patrolship Bhattya is looking for a new member of staff, and Rafe appears to be the man for the job. But then rumour reaches them that he has been mind-wiped for Oath-breaking. A terrible crime, because the Oaths between the Emperors and the Guild are all that holds some measure of peace and stability in place.

But Commander Rallya is persuaded to take him on after he demonstrates his extraordinary skill at “webbing”, which is a sort of virtual reality way of running a spaceship. And once he is crew she is determined to keep him as such, despite a myriad of enemies that seem to appear.

I picked this one up because I had literally just finished reading a book when Sandstone tweeted out some SFF recommendations on twitter. The first one being for this book and as I was on the ‘puter at the time I figured I’d give it a try.

It is a great fun read, fast paced and with some great characters. It also a gay couple, and a racially diverse team of characters. All of whom are characters, not just box-ticking in an attempt to be politically correct. And this from a book first published in the ’80s! Something we are still looking for in many many books published today.

So yes, I really enjoyed it, however it does have its flaws. I found it a bit confusing at start, with the Oaths and the Emperors and the Guild, as Wright doesn’t do any info-dumps you have to figure everything out as you read. I think I got it all straight in the end, although I’d still like to know why the Emperors are emperors, is it just that they are immortal? And why are they immortal?

But the flaws aren’t enough to prevent me from also recommending this book to anyone who likes more personal stories in their space opera. ( )

Fun space opera with a lovely queer romance and interesting characters. I especially liked the aging but forceful female commander, the highly principled webmaster, and the amnesiac oathbreaker.

Enjoyable as it is, it does have some pretty big flaws. The worldbuilding is intriguing but rather too incomplete. In particular, there are a couple of immortal emperors whose immortality is never explained, which feels like an increasingly glaring omission as the story progresses. The ending is far too abrupt: at a certain point, the plot rockets to its climax and the denouement is almost nonexistent. And Wright should have excised about 90% of her adverbs and used the word "said" a lot more frequently, rather than various synonyms for the word.

Still, I had a great time reading the book (when my fingers weren't itching for a red pen), and I look forward to rereading it sometime. ( )