Teaser

Two vast companies dominate the asteroid belt, led by two equally domineering tycoons. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, their shared history, Martin Humphries and Lars Fuchs are at each others throats, triggering a cascade of events that can end only in tragedy . . .

Review

Ben Bova is, as I have said before, an author who never really made it to British bookshops. Despite his prolific output, it’s astonishingly hard to get hold of his works in the UK, even on the second-hand market, without resorting to places like eBay. As a result, despite fully intending to read the Gran Tour universe in its entirety, my collection is patchy at best. I’ve been lucky so far to have read either completed series or standalones, but that luck was bound to run out sooner or later. So it is with The Asteroid Wars, a four-volume series of which I own volumes one, three and four. There are some people out there who will insist that the only logical choice is to read the first book, then wait until I have the full set before continuing. I am not some people. Last year, I read the first. Now, without having read the second, I have enjoyed the third.

Pat of the reason for my easy enjoyment is that there’s a significant time jump between books. Coming into The Silent War without reading The Rock Rats beforehand just feels like jumping into an established universe. There’s a little catching up to do, but nothing the text itself doesn’t provide. Beyond that, my reason for skipping the missing book is simple. I didn’t want to have a stray book hanging around my shelves for who-knows-how-long on the off chance I’ll run into book two at some point in the future. Eventually, I’d have no books left to read except these two. Better to rip that plaster off and get it done now. And a good thing I did, too, because The Silent War is a classic slice of Bova.

We catch up with familiar faces as the cold war for control of the resource-rich asteroid belt turns hot. It’s a war between corporations rather than nations, in what gives the phrase ‘hostile takeover’ a whole new meaning. I love the way Bova threads together various strands from the Gran Tour. The corporations and their leaders are now established names. Selene’s lunar government plays a pivotal role. A child born in this book goes on to become the protagonist of Venus. Right there is another reason not be afraid of reading these books out of order. They all feed into each other. Not everything from the series is relevant. there’s little reference to the New Morality, for example, but past and future books both trace their path through this one. It’s meta-series writing at its finest.

One other thing that stuck out to me is just how much this book, written in 2004, resembles The Expanse novels that would be written about a decade later. The fierce independence of the Belt, the megacorporations, the looming presence of the inner planets. It’s all here. Clearly, there’s no issue of copy-pasting one authors ideas in another, but it’s fascinating to see how many writers are in the same corner of the playground.

So yes, I did skip ahead, but I don’t regret it. As a matter of fact, I’ll probably do it again. Just you wait and see.

Book Stats

• Part of the Grand Tour
• The Asteroid Wars (#3)
• Published by Tor in 2004
• Hard SF
• 410 pages