For
Katya Tatin, a passionate believer in and employee of the Holy Corporation of
GenGen, the opportunity to join the mission to the recently rediscovered colony
of Expatria is much more than a chance to spread the gospel. For her, it represents
a break with the past on Earth, with the Consumer Wars and the subversives who
seek to undermine the standing of the Holy Corporation itself. It offers a chance
to reconfirm her faith.
On Expatria itself, and on the ancient arkships that orbit it, the news of the impending arrival of a mission from Earth further complicates an already murderously complex web of religious and political intrigue. For some, it looks like salvation from a backward-looking, superstition-ridden society; for others, it looks suspiciously like an invasion.
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UK hardback, Victor Gollancz, 1992
US trade paperback, Cosmos, September 2001
"For Katya, a devout apparatchik of the Holy Corporation of GenGen, her voyage
to newly colonised Expatria is a chance to confirm a faith that has been undermined
by her rebellious brother. That subversion, though, has only just begun in a
story that brilliantly shows a world in which religious belief is used to secular
advantage--where creeds are implanted along with genes."
(The Times)
"I have to admit to being truly astonished that this book, which is a direct
sequel to Expatria, is neither simply the second half of one long story
nor is it a lazy reworking of the first in a slightly different form. What we
have here is a first-class novel of character that just happens to be set on
the same world and use some of the same characters as the first novel. Keith
Brooke has achieved something quite rare, in that the characters who we first
met and saw grow and change in the first novel we now encounter and, knowing
where they are coming from, can watch and enjoy and see them grow and change
anew when their society changes due to new and different pressures. The first
novel was of pressures from within, this one is of pressure from without, and
both explore the effects superbly."
(Paul Brazier, Nexus)