Artifact Space

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Weird to say as Miles and I have been social media pals for what feels like forever, but this is actually the first book of his that I have read. I have heard numerous amazing things about his Traitor Son Cycle and most recently Masters & Mages, and of course all of the historical fiction he writes under Christian Cameron, but just have not had the chance to take a stab (pun intended). And Artifact Space is nothing if not a naval novel in space—unless we want to get more specific and call it a Merchant Marines novel in space. It stars Marca Nbaro, barely escaped from an exploitative orphanage onto the Greatship Athens , an enormous ship that serves to facilitate trade between the human sphere and a distant and poorly understood alien culture. But something is destroying Greatships, and if the crew of the Athens can’t figure out how to stop it, they may be next. a strong focus on shuttles, space flight and hangar control, so if you just lurrve that kind of stuff and find it very exciting, which I do, then you'll really love this One of the enemy wonderists, a silver-­haired woman already dripping with nervous sweat, took the lead. Blood seeped from her eyes as she cast a sorcerous incantation we in the business call a ‘heartchain’, because it pierces right through defensive spells to burst the enemy’s blood vessels. It’s not the sort of thing any of us would use because it’s a conjoined sympathy spell, which means a heartchain also kills the person casting it. I marvelled at the old codger’s redoubtable courage and sacrifice as the thread-­like silver tether stretched across the two hundred yards between them to bind her heart to Corrigan’s. Estevar could barely restrain his laughter. ‘Has the cold and damp frozen that helmet to your head, Sir Knight? You speak of two hundred pampered, petulant monks as if they were an army of invading soldiers!’

Adrienne Martini Reviews Artifact Space by Miles Cameron

A Knight of the March of Someil, Estevar reasoned, which explained both the accent and commanding tone. Astronomers have long predicted that objects from other solar systems get shot out into space and arrive in our system.Corrigan was my friend, which was a hard thing to admit to myself and an even harder thing to find in this profession. He’d saved my life more times than I’d saved his, and I know that doesn’t justify the choice I made in that moment, but maybe it explains why, without giving it a second’s thought, I conjured a poetic injustice. I’m a bit ambivalent about this one. I love Christian Cameron’s Greek novels and this seemed a good opportunity to branch out into his science fiction/fantasy ones. A lot of speculative fiction authors dabble occasionally in historical fiction. Why shouldn’t the process go both ways? One of Cameron’s best skills is his ability to reproduce the feel and lived experience of the period, so here where he gets to create the whole universe it should give him a real chance to be creative. The world he’s created is suitably complicated, though I’m not wholly clear on the government’s operation. It’s based loosely on the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages, as you can tell by the fact that most of Venice is aboard the ship we start off with. The navy is really a glorified merchant fleet, with trading rights being part of why you sign up. I thought that was interesting. Space traders was not something I expected to see in a military scifi novel. Please,’ Sir Daven said, jabbing the message sheath at Estevar’s chest, ‘read my lord’s words and heed them, I beg you.’

Arcana Imperii Series by Miles Cameron - Goodreads

Longtime SETI scientist and advocate Jill Tarter, for instance, wondered if the signatures of intelligent civilizations could be imprinted on neutrinos. She said that a leak of the radioactive isotope tritium, which has a short 12-year half-life, could also signal the presence of advanced life because (unless it’s near a supernova) it would have to come quite recently from a nuclear reactor. Another aspect of Artifact Space I enjoyed was that – as one would expect on a massive ship hurtling through space–the book is somewhat episodic. It’s not one long, drawn-out singular problem (though there is a mystery that threads the entire narrative), but more the ongoing adventures of Marca NBaro and the crew of the Greatship Athens. If that sounds like a pitch for this to be a television series, it is; I really, really want to see this as a TV show that sits somewhere between Star Trek the Next Generation and The Expanse.I had to lean against him just to keep from collapsing to the ground. Poetic injustice spells are hard on the body. And the soul, I guess. The world building is really, really good. The way that space travel works and the restrictions on it, and how the human part of the galaxy has evolved based on that, is really well thought out and makes total sense.

Artifact Space - Miles Cameron

The message is carried by a phonograph record – -a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to show the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by space scientist and popularizer Carl Sagan. He and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds to give a sense of what Earth and Earthlings are like. We are thrown into a futuristic society, following the character Marca Nbaro, who joins one of the great ships destined for a trade point to collect xenoglas, a precious material that almost dominates society. But, she is a character with a traumatic past and suffers as a result, with no trust for those around her and a constant foreboding of being discovered and thrown out of her newfound home. Estevar cursed himself for failing to notice the smaller piece of parchment tight against the inside of the case. He had to dig it out with his fingernail before unfolding what turned out to be an elaborate sketch of a naked man such as one might find in a medical text. What made it unusual were the strange markings covering the body: esoteric sigils in designs unrecognisable to Estevar despite his years of research into the esoteric traditions of Tristia. I suppose I couldn’t argue with that. Our employer was an Ascendant Prince – self-­declared, of course – who’d been having some difficulty convincing the local ruling archons of his divinely sanctioned rule. Sending a coven of mercenary wonderists to wage mayhem and murder (I never lied to myself by calling it ‘war’) wasn’t likely to convince anyone of Ascendant Lucien’s holiness, but as his Magnificence had explained it to me, ‘Kill enough of the brave ones and the rest will pray to anyone I tell them to.’Summing up then, Artifact Space made my inner Spacer beam. It starts fast but held my attention throughout, bringing new ideas to traditional SF. This is a paean to all the old SFnal tropes of old but with a brand spanking new upgrade. I couldn’t put it down. Simply brilliant and easily one of my books of the year.

Artifact Space: A Tale from the Arcana Imperii Universe

Gunny says you saved everyone’s ass … or maybe you’re too wet behind the ears to know what you’re doing.’ Akunje’s grin was huge and infectious. The wise move would be to fight from atop the mule. The added height afforded a superior position, and Imperious was no shy pony to cower in the face of danger. Should the need arise to flee, being already in the saddle would increase the odds of escape. Thanks to the publisher and author for an advance reading copy of Artifact Space for review consideration. This did not influence my thoughts or opinions. But my opponent is a man of war, Estevar reminded himself, trained to slash the throat of his enemy’s mount first to counter his advantage. This unusually big variation in brightness means that the object is highly elongated: about ten times as long as it is wide, with a complex, convoluted shape,” said Meech. “We also found that it had a reddish color, similar to objects in the outer solar system, and confirmed that it is completely inert, without the faintest hint of dust around it.”

In preparation for the potentially deep space travels for the Voyager spacecrafts, both were fitted with a greeting for any intelligent life that might be encountered.