PURGATORY

The warden of a remote prison platform and an especially tricky convict must work together to survive a savage jungle planet in Castle’s SF novel.

In the space-going future, a ruling corporate-authoritarian state, the Lenzaaban Collective, has a nasty tendency to annex human-colonized independent worlds. As a result, lots of defeated native militias (“Colonial Corps”) and rebels have been warehoused in enormous penitentiary space stations. At Prison Station Twelve, perched at the end of a wormhole (very much the outer edge of nowhere), Commander Predaxes is a fair-minded warden watching over the incarcerated roughnecks. His leadership is tested by a VIP prisoner, Samea Malik, who hails from a prominent family in the Lenzaab power structure. Malik has just arrived when PS12 is blindsided by sophisticated computer hacking and a marauding warship, evidently seeking to capture or kill Malik. The mysterious inmate proves fearless and resourceful in driving the attackers away, but damage to the station (and complete abandonment by Lenzaab support forces) compels Predaxes to evacuate the remaining prisoners and guards to the nearest habitable planet, the forsaken mining-colony of Fæbos—home to horrific, multi-limbed, blood-sucking and flesh-devouring predators as well as an intelligent, vaguely apelike native civilization called the Olyrii, which may or may not be friendly. Can the ragtag evacuees cooperate to survive hostile engagements, or will they remain shackled to a cruel prisoner-and-guard hierarchy? And what is Malik’s secret, anyway? Action fans will not be disappointed by the onslaught of armaments and battle strategies; only belatedly do the political shenanigans—long-game revolution capers, doubledealing, and dark pasts—come to the fore. The material ultimately morphs into something much like Hollywood’s Avatar movie blockbusters as Predaxes and Malik learn to go native amid the arrow-shooting, jungle-dwelling, empathic Olyrii. Warrior codes and alien-tribal wisdom (“Be their equal or be their prey”) drive the story to its open ending.

Worthy military-SF mayhem on space station cellblocks and in extraterrestrial rainforests.