TĒLEOS

While searching off-world for their absent father, two siblings are arrested and sentenced to brutal labor in Mallery’s SF novel.

Twenty-year-old Cade Carpenter and 18-year-old Claire Carpenter live on Arenaria, a dusty mining planet within the Realm—a conglomerate of hundreds of inhabited worlds whose shared criminal justice system divides the populace into ’zens (law-abiding citizens kept healthy by nanite implants) and 24s (an indentured workforce—mostly convicted felons—whose lowly status is signified by yellow wrist implants). Cade struggles with guilt over the death-by-misadventure of his first and only girlfriend; Claire has been hanging out with 24s and has become addicted to synth, a powdered drug that comes in different colors and mental “flavors.” After a synth dealer attacks, their mother winds up in a coma; soon afterward, the siblings learn that their father, whom they thought was long dead, may still be alive. They travel to Casmiri, a decadent and seedy tourist world, where they attempt to book passage to T­­ēleos—an illicit destination where they’ll be free from the Realm’s governance. The authorities catch and convict them, however, and they both become 24s. Cade is sent to the mines in the asteroid belts surrounding Casmiri, and Claire is put to work in a club/brothel in Casmiri’s Lantern District.Can they escape and reunite with their father? Mallery’s assured prose alternates between the third-person perspectives of Cade and Claire, who contrast well with each other: He’s a sensible, responsible, and protective big brother, while she’s an impetuous tearaway whose addictive tendencies and sense of denial are balanced by a blazing sense of justice. Mallery’s worldbuilding is so deftly executed that occasional expository “intertext” chapters sometimes prove redundant. As in the best SF stories, the world’s technological elements allow for social commentary that hits close to home. Claire and Cade’s quest is absorbing in its own right, but its undercurrents of corruption and exploitation evoke real-world visions of refugees desperate to start new lives in far-off countries. The siblings’ situation unravels quickly, but the story moves with some urgency toward a satisfying, self-contained denouement.

An accomplished and emotionally complex interplanetary tale.