Living in the grip of an ecological disaster, Pia Lamotte is one of the best biologists on the planet. For that reason alone she is being hired by Natocorp, who have a mission to send a group of specialists to Ceres, a large asteroid floating in space, and strip mine it for all the valuable minerals it has. Pia’s job will be to manage the plant life needed to sustain the trip and work with everyone else to make it a success. Of course, her skills come with a price, namely the large forest she has been studying to try and save, but she is not sure how deep she is getting in as she begins to understand just how much power Natocorp has. As part of the role, she is implanted with a chip that gives her access to all the technology around, something everyone else is used to, but she will have to learn to use and understand. Then she has to get used to the new forest she will be tending in Zero-G, not to mention the fact that other Mega corps will stop at nothing to prevent Natocorp from realising their goal leaving her caught in the crossfire.

A short sci-fi story set in a time where there are a few giant mega corp s controlling the planet that has undergone an ecological breakdown. As a reader we are quickly bought up to speed on all the changes from the viewpoint of someone who is more interested in nature than science, and certainly the advances that money can buy above and beyond what average people can afford. However, this does little to set it apart from other sci-fi novels other than to give a familiar basis for readers. The characters in the story are all supposed to be the best in the fields, but there is little of it shown within the story. As the lead character Pia is very much the outsider of the group and we learn most following her reactions to the events unfolding. She is surprisingly passive as someone who is bounced into the plot and accepts the role and the consequences with some reserve. There are other characters who are currently more interesting and I would like to see how they got into this situation such as McKinnon, or even the CEO Miller and how this operation came to be. On a more positive note, the author’s descriptive writing helps to pack a lot in and does work well in informing the reader of the situation and how people are reacting. On the other hand, it is a light read and there is not much substance to the world they live in.

The books is neatly formatted and I only spotted a couple of spelling errors in the text. The chapters are neatly chunked out and while it won’t take long to finish, it does feel like a solid read. There are also some author details and links if you are interested in finding out more.

Overall, I did enjoy my quick sojourn with Pia and the situation she found herself in. Fans of the genre should certainly enjoy it and the follow up books, which hopefully explore more of the world they are living in.