Mad Times

Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross

Dang, I'm letting these go too long. Finished this some time back in August. It's connected to Singularity Sky, but not a sequel really, just some common characters who you'll recognize if you've read the previous book.

The main character is Wednesday, a 16-year-old goth girl who lives on a space station. Wednesday has a friend named Herman she has never seen. Herman speaks to her sometimes (through a communications implant if I remember correctly), and has taught her all sorts of useful skills mostly related to sneaking around the station without getting caught. As the book opens, the station is in the final stages of evacuation prior to the arrival of the wave front of the violent and unexpected explosion of a nearby(-ish several light years away) star. Wednesday isn't on the escape ship, instead she's still on the station running away from a robotic police dog set on capturing her. Why's she still on the station? Only Herman knows.

I can't remember too many of the details of the plot, but even if I could, they'd be spoilers and I wouldn't tell you. Wednesday basically continues on the run for the full length of the 400+ page book. She picks up some more enemies set on her destruction as well as a few allies in addition to the mysterious Herman. Most of the motive for all this is related to the fact that the exploding star didn't explode by accident, someone set it off.

It's a fun little espionage thriller.