Journey [Paperback]

The first of two excellent books about a family who built a world. This book covers about 20 years of their story.

This story is very good: the sequel, Dangerous Games, is absolutely brilliant. If you're going to read them it is best to read this one first as some of the events of "Dangerous Games" are spoilers for "Journey."

Set in a far future universe - exactly how far is not certain as the calendar was re-started about a thousand years before this story - in which mankind has colonised hundreds of worlds. A few of those colonies have been very successful, most have enabled people to eke out a marginal living, some have failed disastrously, forcing people to return to earth as refugees.

Earth is totally owned and dominated by 400 families, one of which is the main Kennerin clan. There is a Space Federation based on a planet called "Althing Green" but it is just a regulatory agency which operate the "Grab" stations necessary to travel between star systems and enforces rules of interstellar navigation.

About 15 years before this story begins, Jason Kennerin, one of the heirs of that house, fell in love with a penniless refugee called Mish on hearing her make a passionate speech against the death penalty during the trial of a criminal. To the horror of his family, Jason and Mish are married. Jason's father struck him off the family roll, and the family gave him a "get lost" payment to leave Earth which was enough to buy a remote habitable world, Aerie.

When Jason and Mish Kennerin arrived on the planet they found that it came complete with its own intelligent indigenous species, the docile and civilised but non-technological Kasirene, who had not been consulted about the sale of their world. Mish and Jason did come to an arrangement with the Kasirene: that story and its long term consequences is told in the second book, "Dangerous Games."

For fifteen years Jason and Mish, with their children and one family retainer, lived as farmers and as the only humans on Aerie, building friendships with the Kasirene and with passing spaceships. But then a nearby star threatens to go nova and destroy the nearby colony of NewHome. Instead of evacuating, the leadership of NewHome goes mad, and sets up concentration camps for scapegoats - people who by reason of their race, social class or religion can somehow be blamed for the sun going nova.

At the start of this book, Jason returns to Aerie with a few hundred refugees who he has rescued from one of the death camps on NewHome. Aerie can no longer be a planet inhabited by a single human family and the natives: they will have to build a society and an economy. In doing so they will face threats both internal and external. In the short term the mad leaders of NewHome eventually work out who rescued the victims from their concentration camp and see an opportunity to seek revenge and obtain a new world at the same time.

In the longer term a huge corporation called Parallax is gradually coming to dominate the economies and interstellar trade over a huge area of space. Parallax is are gradually coming nearer and nearer to Aerie, whose trade they will want to control as they have hundreds of other worlds. Even from light years away the actions of Parallax begin to have an effect on the economy of Aerie: sooner or later they will be a threat to the independence of the planet.

Meanwhile, one of Jason & Mish's children is led by an embittered refugee to do something unthinkable ...

Entertaining and brilliantly told tale. Strongly recommended.