SECOND CHANCES

Billed as an “homage” to Joseph Conrad's classic Lord Jim, by which the publishers mean Lord Jim in Space. Following the debilitating Secessionist wars, Alliance ex-weapons expert, Jim-no last name-ships aboard a civilian vessel carrying vital supplies and preserved biological material to a distant colony world. Regarded by the officers as a contemptible “tin soldier,” Jim nevertheless saves the ship when it's attacked by pirates (although this occurs before the story opens). But then the partially disabled ship faces a deadly ion storm; again, Jim saves the day, while the cowardly officers jump ship. In a moment of weakness, Jim jumps with them, abandoning his lower-deck shipmates. The officers escape unpunished, ship and crew survive, and Jim can't forgive himself. An old friend, Captain Cam Marlow, saves Jim from himself and finds him useful jobs to do—but he can't escape his past. Finally he's offered what amounts to a suicide mission, helping a remote colony planet defend itself from pirates bent on conquest. Jim's tale is interspersed with long passages expanding on Marlow's career—he was revived after being frozen for 20 years during the war and finds it difficult to readapt—and lots of clever but heavy-handed military chat.

Patchily engaging—the early Jim sections are the best—and try to ignore both the publisher's ludicrous comparisons and the author's (Shards of Empire, 1996, etc.) ponderous and insistent parallels.