An indentured miner finds a damaged AI ship buried on her world. With the world controlled by corporations, and her village being about to starve, the metal in the ship is worth their lives, but restored it could bring their freedom. A shame it has its own agenda.

The story starts well before the blurb, and for a moment I did wonder what I was reading. It quickly becomes obvious this is setup, but I am not honestly sure it is necessary as the ship, Baz, retells the events once it meets Cress. It is professionally written, with a sparse style that keeps things moving, but which also means we don’t get much of a feel for the supporting cast, and only the two main leads are really fleshed out through the time we spend with them.

The problem I have with this book is simple. It certainly leaves you wanting to know what happens next because none of the plot threads wrap up. This is less Part One than Chapter One, as the story stops abruptly rather than reaching a natural end or breakpoint. It is all world-building and the stakes are ratcheted higher and higher, and in this book at least there is no pay-off. The reason is at the end: this is an ongoing project and the author requests donations from Patreon or Paypal towards the next book.

It appears to be tie-in fiction for the Walking Steel game, a mecha-combat tactics game, but as I don’t play the game I don’t know how well it ties in.

As sci-fi it is sadly a little average. It is well-written, with decent world-building, but anyone who follows mecha fiction or AI ship stories will find little unusual or unique here.

Its a three, but fans of the game might want to look it out.