Both a spy story and a splendid space opera, this strong science fiction debut by a young British author is mighty impressive. Highly praised by no other than Joanne Harris it is mostly set on the remote heavy gravity and storm-covered colony planet of Magenta. Mourning the death of his own wife, agent Keon Rouse, returns to his native home only to find himself accused of theft and becomes involved in investigating a new, deadly drug. Helping him along is a simulacrum of his late wife, who was also an intelligence operative. As the plot explodes into all sorts of tantalising tangents, the odd couple strengthen their bond and face a series of machinations and conspiracies that soon become a threat to everything they knew about their past marriage. All the rigour of a tightly plotted classic crime story with all the technicolour thrills of SF at its most gaudy. Wonderful. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
After a five year sabbatical following the tragic death of his wife and fellow agent Alysha, Keon Rause returns to the distant colony world of Magenta to resume service with the Magentan Intelligence Service. With him he brings an artificial recreation of his wife's personality, a simulacrum built from every digital trace she left behind. She has been constructed with one purpose - to discover the truth behind her own death - but Keon's relationship with her has grown into something more, something frighteningly dependent, something that verges on love.
Cashing in old favours, Keon uses his return to the Service to take on a series of cases that allow him and the artificial Alysha to piece together his wife's last days. His investigations lead him inexorably along the same paths Alysha followed five years earlier, to a sinister and deadly group with an unhealthy fascination for the unknowable alien Masters; but as the wider world of Magenta is threatened with an imminent crisis, Keon finds himself in a dilemma: do his duty and stand with his team to expose a villainous crime, or sacrifice them all for the truth about his wife?
