Title: Architects of Memory
Author: Karen Osborne
Publisher: Tor
Pub date: August 2020
Series: The Memory War, book 1
Genre: Science fiction
Space exploration and colonization are expensive. Too expensive for countries. Corporations rule the universe. If you’re lucky, you’re born a citizen. If not, then you’re an uncitizen and your only hope for a better future for yourself and your family is earning citizenship through indenture.
Ash is trying to rebuild her life and earn her citizenship after an alien attack destroyed her life, taking her job as a miner and killing her fiance. Now she’s a pilot for a salvage crew with a real chance of buying out her contract. And there’s the bonus of a possible chance of love with Kate, the crew’s captain.
The biggest hurdle is the time clock in Ash’s body is counting down quicker than she planned. If the corporation discovers her terminal illness, they’ll cancel her indenture contract and leave her to die on the nearest planet.
But what if Ash’s illness isn’t actually celestrium sickness but something that could turn her into a weapon. A weapon that corporations would do anything to control.
My thoughts
This one roller coaster ride of a book full of corporate espionage and secret experiments and double double crosses all set against an outerspace backdrop. Thrilling and heart wrenching right through the end.
I’m excited to see where the second book leads.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for the DRC.
Your thoughts
What did you think of Architects of Memory? Will corporations be the ones to fund space exploration?
Other books
  |   |
Looking for an unlikely love story set against a backdrop of intergalactic war? Try This Is How You Lose the Time War. If it’s more of a band of misfits battling to save the universe that you’re after, try Aurora Rising.
About the author
KAREN OSBORNE is a writer, visual storyteller and violinist. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Fireside, Escape Pod, Robot Dinosaurs, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Laura Reads Books 