Ian Hutchings has a big problem. He has been
convicted of murder; not simply the murder of one or two people, not a dozen. Ian’s crime is that he has ended the lives of one billion humans! The problem is that he can’t remember committing such an unspeakable atrocity. Portions of his memory have been removed. He is sentenced to
exile for the rest of his life aboard
Ra, a heavily shielded
station magnetically anchored to the core of the Sun. There he, and over a hundred other men and women also convicted of similar crimes must spend their sentences siphoning plasma to be sent back to Earth. All the prisoners find themselves in the same situation with parts of their memories gone. Some have been so severely wiped that they have been reduced back to their childhoods. Escape is impossible; the station hangs within the roiling mass of the Sun’s photosphere. Not only this, but the
inmates are monitored by the Vapor, a strange, robotic being who greeted them all when they arrived and informed them of what was expected of them. Should anyone fail to obey the rules set down by the Vapor or should they stray into, or intentionally enter, the Forbidden Zone of the station, he will declare an Injunction and destroy them all in a heartbeat. After three long, uneventful years of hard labor something happens to cause a stir. A ship arrives from Earth with six
new inmates. But as soon as these new
arrivals come aboard strange things begin to happen on the station. An air of definite mystery and even dread pervades the events in the book. There are many great twists as the story progresses and a truly surprising ending that readers are not likely to see coming. I certainly didn’t.
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