Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross
01/11/2004 . Source: Sue Davies 
pub: Ace. 355 page hardback. Price: $23.95 (US), $36.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-441-01159-4. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.penguin.com
Someone has committed the ultimate crime. The planet of Moscow and all its moons and satellites have been destroyed by a planet killing weapon and the implications are huge. Moscow's own defensive missiles have been triggered and are on an unalterable course to hit New Dresden, a similar world to Moscow except it happened to be top of the list for retaliation. Only the surviving ambassadors are able to stop the weapons but someone thinks it's funny to pick them off before they can change their minds.
Wednesday is a refugee from one of Moscow's outlying space stations, Old Newfie. Her invisible friend, Herman, had asked her to recover some evidence before it was destroyed by the radioactive wavefront. Herman is a representative of the Escaton. This benign if meddling species like to keep a fatherly eye on the galaxy to make sure that no one gets above themselves. They are usually able to step in and sort out the mess but this time there have been unexpected developments which show that even the Escaton are not infallible.
Three years on and living in poverty with her family, Wednesday becomes the target of some mopping up thanks to her unwanted visit to collect evidence and gets a new message from Herman. With her family eliminated, she will be next unless she can escape on the visiting interstellar ship the Romanov.
Frank's a journalist who would rather not get involved, he still has nightmares about his stint on Newpeace during its abortive revolution. Aboard the Romanov, he is satisfied sending thundering editorials to the Times until Wednesday blunders into his life and his heart.
With the UN, in the person of Rachel Monsuer, trying to stop the assassin, the link is made to the Romanov. An abortive attempt on the ambassador's life on New Dresden means Rachel and husband Martin Springfield are forced to board the Romanov and attempt to track down the elusive killer.
This is a great book. So good, I've read it twice already. There is a huge amount of information, description, scientific theory and plot packed into this book. It effortlessly combines space, morality, politics, humour and romance into the 355 pages of an enlarged paperback. Moving smoothly, it sings out for a quality series but it would be hard to do the densely packed pages justice. I enjoyed Stross' first novel but this is infinitely more enjoyable and for me, at least, easier to follow. His characters feel pain, exhaustion and fear and the descriptions and necessary information do not hold up the movement of the story. His created environment is spot on with its mix of potential technology such as the implants which enhance human response and email delivered to directly to the retina combined with the fiction of interstellar space travel. I like the way Stross mixed in politics which never changes and people just trying to get on with their lives. All in all, a great read and recommended.
Sue Davies
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