4.5 out of 5 stars

Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left the earth. His mother was on the ship and his life changed forever at that point. He was left with his father who had not made the selection for the ship and they ended up in the hands of the religious cult known as the Circle run by the charismatic leader called Alejandro Casales. That was forty years ago and attention is being focused on the capsule that was left as it is going to be opened soon.

He left that cult and made his way to the UK where he now works for the Ministry of Justice as an investigator. He is called in by his seniors to investigate a death. Alejandro Casales has been found in his hotel room and they think that he will be the best person to find out who did it. Given the profile of Casaleshas, there are a lot of interested parties and the inevitable legal teams from various gov-corps around the world who have an interest in knowing what happened.
He will have to ignore all his shared history with Casaleshas, but as he uncovers each clue he realises that he is getting into murkier and murkier territory.

I thought this was a big step up from her first book in this series. The pace of it is really fast as she throughs her main character through the emotional and physical mill whilst trying to solve this mysterious case. I got halfway through the book and realised that he couldn’t have solved the case already. He hadn’t, there was just so much more to unpack in the story. I really liked how she has built the society, it feels very dystopian with a pervasive tech that is built into people when they are chipped at the age of 16. The way that the super rich can influence governments is equally worrying, it feels like she has created a natural extrapolation of where we are in society at the moment. Excellent stuff and onto the next now.

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