Foreigner
Book Three of the Quintaglio Ascension
My least favourite of the trilogy, Foreigner takes on more than it can chew (no pun intended). After introducing us to the Quintaglio society through the adventures of Asfan, the Galileo of their world, we move to book two where we meet Asfan’s son Toroca, the Darwin. In book three, we encounter Mokleb, the Freud. But in addition to the Freud story line, the Quintaglios discover a previously unknown set of islands where they find a race of “Others”. Unfortunately the Others invoke an extreme territorial instinct in the Quintaglios causing them to attack and kill any Others that try to interact with them. This eventually leads to the somewhat weak suggestion that the territorial instinct is just a psychosis (a weak way to further explain the Freud element) that was instilled in them at an early age by a religious culling of creche-mates instituted in order to control population. Meanwhile, another group of Quintaglios excavates a crashed spaceship, releasing a swarm of nanobots that use rock and dirt to build a set of space elevators and a new spaceship, which the Quintaglios need to escape their doomed homeland.
All in all, it’s just too much. The Freud story line felt forced to me, and distracted from the important mission which was to find a way to travel into space in search of a new home before their planet/moon is torn apart by extreme tidal forces in a few short generations.
Rating: Borrow the trilogy, but temper your expectations.