POLARIS

Jeth and his band of interstellar thieves tackle their most dangerous mission yet.

Usually, Jeth chooses his gang’s escapades himself, even while they’re busy evading the Interstellar Transport Authority, the most powerful entity in the universe. The ITA’s pursuing Jeth for events from eight months ago (Avalon, 2014). But when crime lord Dax seizes the gang and assigns them to destroy something enormous on First-Earth, there’s no refusing—not only because Jeth’s long-disappeared mother is involved, but because Dax slides a brain implant into Jeth’s head. The implant increases his strength, but it also bends Jeth’s will to Dax’s—and leaves him going through withdrawal when it’s removed. This far-future space opera provides twists and turns aplenty, though the science is very soft: Brain implants that threaten a person’s selfhood slide in and out of the skull easy as pie; extraterrestrials called Pyreans enable spaceships to jump through metaspace and humans to communicate brain to brain. Humanity’s enslavement of those Pyreans lies at the story’s core, but the text soft-pedals the atrocity; Jeth himself initially finds the Pyreans “a remarkable life-form, so useful.” Emotions feature more heavily here than in Avalon, which is unfortunate, because Arnett’s rugged, macho narration (“Every second he sat here helpless was torture”; Jeth’s girlfriend is “all blond hair and pale skin”) can’t pull them off.

Slapdash science and little complexity—read for bang-’em-up action.