Formula IN SPACE!

        The first few chapters of Andrew Moriarty's Trans-Galactic Insurance: Adventures of Jump Space Accountant resembles nothing so much as the first three issues or episodes of a mini-series which one would drop and later, after the series was complete, revisit now that one understood the importance of the interminable exposition to a serviceable but hardly exciting mystery. The initial reference to Belters suggested a story that was Solar rather than Galactic. The characters were sufficiently fleshed out to serve the plot but scarcely more than that, as is common espionage plots. The implication of a plucky girl who aids the protagonist also being a minor in modern Western sensibilities, and therefore a nod to Heinleinian heroine, was well executed by a single line. The portrayal of the ideal spy as too boring to cause casual notice was a relief from the flashy action heroes of so much science fiction.

               The greatest blemish in the plot-driven world-building is the use of the term ‘credit’ as a basic fiat unit of currency in a book starring an accountant investigating fraud! I realize that credit is a generic science-fictional unit of currency, but one would think that a story about financial fraud would be more aware of the specific financial meaning of credit and debit in balancing accounts. It is not that Moriarty should have chosen some exotic name for the currency, such as ‘quatloos'; but he should have used something other than ‘credits’ when the fictional economy uses a double-entry system. This must be the way that physicists and engineers feel about gross ‘errors’ in other science fiction novels. If you are looking for a series that begins with a space-based human civilization cut off from its parent, you should go read John Scalzi’s latest series, The Interdependency Trilogy, instead.