"Who Can Own The Stars?" by Mackey Chandler

A great good morning to my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, remember to keep limber, and move around every hour.

This is the cover art, executed marvelously by Sarah A Hoyt, followed by an Amazon Associates link to the book itself. If you buy something after clicking it, I get a small amount, I believe it’s 2% or so, but I’m not going to look it up.

Who Can Own The Stars?

This is installment #12 in Mackey Chandler’s “April” series, in which the astounding lady makes friends of people with no social skills, and enemies of countries with nuclear capabilities. 

Installment #12; keep that in mind! 

Twice, I’ve been tasked with writing reviews of books nominated for a Dragon Award. Frequently, those were installments in a series; so much so, that I think a separate award category ought to be established for them. Unfortunately, in some cases, the work was nearly opaque to me, as I had not read the prior material. 
Now: in an installment number TWELVE, I would have expected that there be at least SOME aspects of the story that I would find confusing. After all, there have been eleven books setting the stage.

THAT WAS NEVER THE CASE. 

There was NO preexisting story element missing that prevented me from knowing what was going on. That’s amazing, especially when you consider just how many stories are being told at the same time: financial skullduggery AND development (those are two different story lines; families in conflict; conflict with Earth government(s); conflict with Martian government(s); technological discoveries; the fate of people re-establishing a community among the ruins in California. 
In every case, Chandler (somehow) manages to present the reader with enough background so that there isn’t a single bit of confusion, and each one of those stories is INTERESTING!
I think it’s because he spent his life working with things. He MADE things. He FIXED things. And he doubtless had to EXPLAIN things to people who didn’t share his expertise.

He didn't learn how to tell stories from a university class in creative writing.

 
Anyway, that’s my theory.

Now, on to the book review; this part will be submitted to Amazon and posted on Goodreads:

“Who Can Own The Stars?” is a nice, catchy title; it’s also expressed as a question. While I will disclose that the question is answered in the course of the narrative, I will NOT spoiler by telling you the answer, or the page number on which it may be discussed.

Multiple story lines, some intermingled, are all presented coherently, and without requiring that the reader have access to the first 11 books in the series.  These include:

• The financing and occupancy of a space habitat, designed for near-self-sufficiency.
• The problems encountered by survivors of of a near-total collapse of civilization in parts of the former United States.
• Trade interactions with a break-away Martian government, still in turmoil; in possession of potentially destabilizing alien artifacts, which they are fanatically determined to keep a secret.
• At least THREE story lines involve individuals with social skills deficits; they range from predatory/vindictive, to merely clueless but potentially lethal on a global scale.
• An exceedingly interesting series of events highlighting the difficulties of trade between governmental entities that have little or no common ground; thus, fiat currency, based on trust in a government is functionally useless in trade.

I found that each of these story lines was so compelling, that I almost shoved the conflict mentioned in the blurb, between the Lunar government and that of North America, into the background.

While there is much left to tell with the stories presented here, it’s not a cliff-hanger. Yes, I want to know more about what happens, but I don’t feel cheated in the slightest that I’m left with unanswered questions.

A note: I read FAST; I always have. Evidently,  I encode content-free words (such as proper names) and numbers into smaller units for transmission to wherever I process stories. Thus, I can recall a PLOT quite easily, but can’t tell you the names of the characters. With this book, I found it necessary to keep a log of people and places; there are enough characters and settings to make that essential for me to write a coherent review.  YMMV.

Peace be on your household.