I am glad to see Wil McCarthy getting back into science fiction with a near-future space opera with enough inventive tech to fill a much longer book.
McCarthy envisions a future in which space and lunar habitats are dominated by Russian oligarchs and capitalists with more money than they know to spend. Each has his own agenda. Meanwhile, NASA and the U.S. government want to get involved. And, oh yes, some monks are working to create sustainable agriculture on the Moon.
Our protagonist, Alice, is an ex-combat medic working undercover for the U.S. president. She hopes to take over the nascent space colony at L1, even if it kills her. Dona, another agent, finds herself working for a Russian gangster who wants to control the helium-three economy in cislunar space.
The novel has as much sex, science, and martial arts as anyone could wish.
My only complaint is that McCarthy is wildly optimistic about the pace of technological development. Do you really think we will have permanent colonies on the Moon and L1 by 2051? Not even Elon in his dreams. ( )

Word of warning: this review won’t be a wee bit spoilery…

As an example of contemporary SF close to science but using Woke stuff, this novel is a good example. When I became aware in 2020 that this novel was in the works, I was sure when it was released, myself & my assorted classmates (physics/astronomy/planetary science) would be going thro it with a fine tooth-comb. There would doubtless be much hand-wringing & head-teasking, flavoured with a tinge of Awesome (I hope). The space science, yeah ok it is (but there isn’t much of it anyway), but because this is a Near-Space SF novel you won’t get far-fetched things like the Alcubierre drive (science-wise it is an untested, yet fascinating theory, as are some very new, exciting, but seemingly impossible things that in fact work) or the EmDrive (well, the EmDrive certainly doesn't work: it really is the most ridiculous nonsense. Me and my assorted classmates might like to amuse ourselves with the 'theory' paper. Contemplate, for example, the hilarious consequences of a frame-dependent thrust (eq. 9)). Are you expecting the sort of SF where the launch device blows up, yes, in one of the most shameless bits of manufactured drama you've ever seen? And the ship exploding in a fireball, all being lost, only for the narrative to pan to the left and reveal that they'd actually built a feckin' IDENTICAL spare one, and it's just sitting there idling on the tarmac and ready to roll...? (btw, if you've managed to avoid “Contact” for 20 years, and it's not been spoiled by me in one of my reviews, Richwoods or Mr. Garrison of South Park, keep up the good work). Nope. Nothing like that in here. Well, 'thrilling' is a subjective judgement, I suppose. “Rich Men’s Sky” took some amazing locations and characters, reduced them to bumbling lowest-common-denominator status, and used them to tell a pretty obvious story of personal redemption yadda yadda. Me, I'd rather watch NASA TV. I'm not sure what “Rich Men’s Sky” was trying to be - some sort of semi-new-age technomenphobic fable of self-discovery and symbolic rebirth (in Space, no less)? The main character appears to be trapped in the type of nightmare in which you stand up in class and suddenly realise you forgot to put your clothes on. To add insult to gender-reversed-stereotyped injury, Alice’s narrative deliveries are utterly dependent upon Obi-Wan Kenobi style guidance… I have no problem with Woke stuff; what I have a problem with is self-consistency, which applies to all genres (I love Chris Brookmyre's discussion of the "bullet deadliness quotient" in "One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night"). I have no problem reading about planets being used as projectiles in the Lensman books, but would have a wee problem if they were used in Neuromancer) ( )