From Publishers Weekly
Heavy on finance and light on action, Shwartz's new stand-alone hard SF novel makes the excitement of space flight and colonization secondary to corporate kowtowing. Alpha Consultants LLC sends Caroline Cater "CC" Williams to Vesta Colony in deep space to audit an illicit money trail. While crawling up the corporate ladder, CC plans to keep a low profile. However, as she digs deeper into unethical trades, several "accidents" threaten her life. During a routine training flight with the handsome Marc Davidoff, CC spots an unidentified spaceship that may be carrying hostile aliens. Shwartz (Second Chances) sets up the plot so that CC and her associates gauge whether aliens are good or bad by the way they handle their trades. The not particularly heroic CC mostly gets praised for her good computer skills and her ability to remember and implement basic space training. Predictably, when she has to leap, whether to financial assumptions about aliens or into Marc's arms, it's only too clear that, regardless of logic, she'll always land on her feet. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In a future of multiplanetary corporations and mining colonies in the asteroid belt, CC Williams is a high-octane financial analyst whose bosses have sent her to investigate a mining operation on the asteroid Vesta, where profits are mysteriously hemorrhaging away because of bad trades. A veteran of climbing the corporate ladder from the lower classes while constantly fending off rivals, CC is eager to prove her mettle and smooth the way for an upcoming marriage and extravagant honeymoon. Yet awaiting her on Vesta is a maze of political maneuvering, hints of insider trading, and an attempted murder that also yields the horrifying implication that someone is plotting a deadly merger with the potential to decimate the solar system's financial markets and even threaten humankind. Shwartz has several previous award-nominated works under her belt, as well as two rousing Star Trek novels, and her experience shows here in tautly paced action and a vivid depiction of Wall Street's interplanetary dominion a few centuries hence. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Caroline Cassandra Williams is on the fast track and determined to stay there. A financial analyst in one of the mega-global corporates she's stayed one step ahead of her enemies to keep from losing her place as a valued salaryman -- and two steps in front of those colleagues who would grind her down in a nanosecond to reach the next rung of economic freedom. Even though she's clawed her way out of the insulae, where working poor are warehoused, she keeps herself grimly focused with nightmares of losing her job. Or being frozen into a shipsicle and shipped to the Outer Rim as an expendable drudge. Or -- worst case --going bankrupt and dying slowly as the authorities harvest her limbs and other body parts.
When the multiplanetary company she works for sends CC to audit Vesta Colony to learn why assets keep hemorrhaging away, she knows this is her big chance to make the Ultimate Career Move. Assuming she gets the facts and pins the crooked trades and any other crimes she finds on someone or a bunch of someones she can turn in with a clear conscience, she can go home first class, collect her fiancé and a fat bonus, then march down the aisle in a perfectly event-planned wedding into a prosperous-ever-after twin career track. She's already even planned vacations with their children-to-come at the theme parks on Easter Island, the cofferdams surrounding Disney World, and the Gobi Dinosaur Pavilions. If CC succeeds, she's set for the rest of her life.
But Vesta turns out to be unlike anything CC has ever seen, and the deeper she delves, the more twisted things get until her life -- not to mention her career -- hangs in the balance. As plots expose more plots, CC finds herself confronting not just possible insider trading and fraud, but attempted murder. Who's at fault? She's got a colony of suspects, including old friends, old rivals and a dashing EarthServ pilot who knows a whole lot more about CC and her worlds than he's letting on and shows signs of being able to shake them -- and her will-power -- any time he wants.
Someone among the analysts, traders, EarthServ, and retired diplomats CC meets is hatching a deadly merger with the potential not just to crash the Solar System's economy, but wipe out humankind. Will CC find out in time -- or will the takeover she fears turn not just hostile, but deadly?
About the Author
Susan Shwartz has been nominated for the Nebula, the Hugo and the World Fantasy Awards and is the author of several novels, includuing Second Chances, Heritage of Flight, and The Grail of Hearts, as well as the very well received Star Trek novels, Vulcan's Forge and Vulcan's Heart. She resides in New York City and is a veteran of the financial-services industry.
Hostile Takeover FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Caroline Cassandra Williams is on the fast track and determined to stay there. A financial analyst in one of the mega-global corporations, she's stayed one step ahead of her enemies to keep from losing her place as a valued salaryman - and two steps in front of those colleagues who would grind her down in a nanosecond to reach the next rung of economic freedom. Even though she's clawed her way out of the Insulae, where the working poor are warehoused, she keeps herself grimly focused with nightmares of losing her job. Or being frozen into a shipsicle and shipped to the Outer Rim as an expendable drudge. Or, worst case, going bankrupt and dying slowly as the authorities harvest her limbs and other body parts." "When the multiplanetary company she works for sends CC to audit Vesta Colony to learn why assets keep hemorrhaging away, she knows this is her big chance to make the Ultimate Career Move. Assuming she gets the facts and pins the crooked trades, and any other crimes she finds, on someone - or a bunch of someones - she can turn in with a clear conscience, she can go home first-class, collect her fiance and a fat bonus, then march down the aisle in a perfectly event-planned wedding into a prosperous-ever-after twin career track. She's already even planned vacations with their children-to-come at the theme parks on Easter Island, the cofferdams surrounding Disney World, and the Gobi Dinosaur Pavilions. If CC succeeds, she's set for the rest of her life." "But Vesta turns out to be unlike anything CC has ever seen, and the deeper she delves, the more twisted things get, until her life - not to mention her career - hangs in the balance. As plots unfold into more plots, CC finds herself confronting not just possible insider trading and fraud but attempted murder. Who's behind it all? She's got a colony of suspects, including old friends, old rivals, and a dashing EarthServ pilot who knows a whole lot more about CC and her worlds than he's letting on - and who s
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Heavy on finance and light on action, Shwartz's new stand-alone hard SF novel makes the excitement of space flight and colonization secondary to corporate kowtowing. Alpha Consultants LLC sends Caroline Cater "CC" Williams to Vesta Colony in deep space to audit an illicit money trail. While crawling up the corporate ladder, CC plans to keep a low profile. However, as she digs deeper into unethical trades, several "accidents" threaten her life. During a routine training flight with the handsome Marc Davidoff, CC spots an unidentified spaceship that may be carrying hostile aliens. Shwartz (Second Chances) sets up the plot so that CC and her associates gauge whether aliens are good or bad by the way they handle their trades. The not particularly heroic CC mostly gets praised for her good computer skills and her ability to remember and implement basic space training. Predictably, when she has to leap, whether to financial assumptions about aliens or into Marc's arms, it's only too clear that, regardless of logic, she'll always land on her feet. Agent, Richard Curtis. (Dec. 2) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Financial analyst and cybertrader Caroline Cater (CC) Williams accepts an assignment to a deep-space mining colony to investigate a case of missing assets. Though eager to prove herself to her employers, CC finds herself embroiled in problems she could never anticipate, including a plot to undermine Earth's monetary system and potentially to destroy civilization itself. The author of Second Chances and other sf and fantasy novels presents a solid hard sf action tale with a tough-minded heroine and a vividly realized far-space setting. For most sf collections. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Cutthroat corporate politics in an interplanetary future. Shwartz (Second Chances, 2001) tells her story from the viewpoint of CC Williams, an upwardly mobile and talented auditor sent by her employer, Alpha Consultants, to investigate financial high-jinks on the asteroid Vesta. The story begins in transit, where CC struggles to maintain status in relation to various other ship's passengers. Former Ambassador Neave and his wife Margaret are the highest-ranking aboard, and CC is pleased when they seem to befriend her. A direct threat is the ultracompetitive Sandy, whose slick veneer conceals slum origins similar to CC's, and the ethics of a weasel. CC also meets Mark Davidoff, scion of a wealthy clan and a person to be reckoned with despite his current position as a military officer attached to the ship. In a mandatory training mission outside the ship, CC and Mark spot a fast-moving "bogey," the first clue to the eventual plot direction. Finally, on Vesta, CC settles down to her audit, looking through financial records to discover who's been diverting funds. But barely has she settled in than a series of apparent accidents convince her that someone is trying to prevent her from finishing her job. Meanwhile, Mark takes her slumming to a bar frequented by the colony's spacers, and she finds herself enjoying life with the locals far better than she does with her fiance, David IV, back on Earth. The Vesta colony is interesting and, in general, believably portrayed. Unfortunately, though, Shwartz doesn't generate enough plot momentum to make up for her heroine's overall lack of sympathetic traits. When CC finally puts the financial clues together and stumbles on the plot's big surprise, thepayoff is certainly adequate-but a fair number of readers may have stopped caring. Competent world-building undercut by a terminally uptight protagonist and a plodding storyline.
Art & Photography
Book Info
