The great thing about this book is that there are big underlying themes and the reader is presented with a real mystery about what is going on, as to begin with problems and onslaughts pile into the team of detectives. The hospital became a regular location, given the pounding some characters take. Peters makes good use of the tech, which via a built-in 'servant' provides a kind of super Siri service that feeds information to lenses in the eyes, so quite often a character can be talking to someone and simultaneously receiving a second feed of information.
The only downside to this is that during complex scenes, particularly the three or four all-out battles, it gets very difficult to follow the flow of where information is coming from and who is doing what to whom. It was a combination of this confusion and the fact that I guessed the main twist in the ending about halfway through what is a quite lengthy book that prevented me from giving From Distant Stars a five star rating. (It's a very minor moan, but it was also amusing that the cover proclaims 'His wife died. Her digital copy has been erased. So who is using her name?' But I can't recall anywhere in the plot that features someone using his wife's name.)
As Peters gets into top gear in the last fifty pages or so it becomes a true un-put-downable page turner, and though there are clear hooks being set up for a sequel, the ending (unlike some series books) is satisfying enough to make this feel like a good stand-alone read. There's no sense of being let down at the end.
All in all, Peters had made an impressive contribution to the thriving 'detectives in space' sub genre, and I look forward to more.
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Review by Brian Clegg
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