Sister Time by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane
Cover art by Clyde Caldwell
Published by Baen Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
Remember Cally's little sister Michelle? The one who was so quiet and precise. The one who was sent to an Indowy planet as part of a plan for a reserve population of humans in case the Posleen invasion of Earth resulted in the extinction of humanity there.
She's all grown up now, and she's exceeded everybody's wildest expectations. Given the privilege of training in sohon, the mysterious techniques by which the Indowy create GalTech, she not only succeeded, but even mastered it.
Unfortunately, that mastery has come at a price. Like the Indowy, she has become entangled in the system of debts by which the Darhel keep their workforce effectively enslaved. True, she knows techniques by which she could cause entire suns to go nova and destroy the hated Darhel, but her rigorous training has also included inculcation in the Path, the Galactic philosophy of non-violence that makes effective resistance to the Darhel's endless machinations impossible.
However, her sister Cally has no such constraints. Far from it, Cally has mastered the arts of the assassin as thoroughly as Michelle has those of the sohon master. So when Michelle is in danger of having her debts called in by her Darhel masters as the result of betrayal by another Indowy-trained human, she turns to Cally for assistance.
But in a society where schemes are made on thousand-year bases, taking out family enemies may not be as simple a task as it seems.
Review posed December 14, 2008
Buy Sister Time (The Posleen War)