Gollancz, 2018, 324 p, plus ii p Acknowledgements.

That I have read Newman’s Planetfall sequence in the wrong order (3,4,2,1 to be precise) doesn’t really matter that much as they can all be read as stand alone titles. Here, we are in the years after an expedition to another planet under the guidance of a woman called The Pathfinder in search of God. On landing the expedition’s members found what is now called God’s city. This is an “organic citadel” like a “huge forest of baobab trees tangled round one another,” and, when hot, grows tendrils to manage the heat.

The story is narrated by expedition member Renata Ghali (Ren,) the settlement’s 3D printer engineer, whose later revelation to be a hoarder whose home pod is piled with rubbish stolen from the settlement’s recycling machine, the Masher, is an indication of possible unreliability. She is troubled by fellow expedition member Cillian Mackenzie (Mack,) whose resolve held the community together after the Pathfinder did not return from a foray inside God’s City, saying she was “communing with the creator,” and telling them all to await her return. What has evolved in the colony in the years since is in effect a cult.

Some time after The Pathfinder’s disappearance, other members of the original expedition were lost elsewhere on the planet. Plot kicks in when a lone outsider called Lee Sung-Soo, a survivor of those lost colonists, who is also The Pathfinder’s grandson, turns up at the city.

Ren’s obligations to Mack take her inside God’s city, a strange unsettling place where perspectives shift and passageways can suddenly change orientation. Her explorations lead her to wonder whether the colonists are the first or if there have been previous visitors to the planet; visitors who could only have been alien.

As things unfold we discover what actually happened to The Pathfinder inside God’s city, the revelation of which to the colony has ramifications for Ren, Mack and the settlement as whole.

Newman’s writing is not in question. She is particularly good on Ren’s mental disintegration.

The integration of religious elements with an SF setting is a little awkward though.

Pedant’s corner:- Printed in USian, bacteria (the word is treated as if it’s singular – but that would be bacterium,) outside of (x 2: just ‘outside’; no ‘of’,) “none of them satisfy me” (none of them satisfies me,) “in the opposite direction of God’s city” (it’s ‘opposite direction to’ not ‘opposite direction of’.) “None of them were looking at me” (None of them was looking at me.) “None of them are good” (None of them is good.) “None of them are paying attention” (None of them is paying attention,) “neither of them say anything” (neither of them says anything.) “None of them are listening” (None of them is listening,) “our species’ capacity” (species here is singular; so ‘the capacity of our species would be better.) “None of them are familiar” (None of them is familiar.)

Gollancz, 2016, 371 p.

I seem to have progressed into reading Newman’s series of Planetfall novels backwards. Before Mars and Atlas Alone I did read in the correct order (3 before 4) but this is number 2 in the sequence and I have not yet read Planetfall, the first.

Our viewpoint character here, Carlos Moreno, is indentured as a detective with the Ministry of Justice and very good at his job. He has an unfortunate history, though, as his mother famously went off on a one-way trip into space on a ship called Atlas (he has to dodge the occasional journalist wanting to know how he feels about that) and he spent time in Texas with a religious cult known as the Circle before escaping it and enduring various degrading situations until his indentiture, which is a contract from which he is unlikely ever to secure release. He is called in to investigate the death of Alejandro Casales, the leader of the Circle, in a hotel on Dartmoor. It looks like murder but (of course) something about the circumstances does not seem right to Carlos. His endeavours are complicated by the political situation with representatives of the Americans and of the political entity known as Norope as well as the MoJ requiring to be satisfied.

For most of the book this is more or less a police procedural novel albeit with Science Fictional trappings – that spaceship and the Artificial Personal Assistant, APA, chips with access to the internet most people have in their heads being the most obvious of these. Moreno’s APA is called Tia.

During the investigation, one of the hotel guests, Travis Gabor, asks to be interviewed last. His husband Stefan Gabor, an extremely wealthy man, is as nasty a piece of work as you could imagine. This turns out to be unfortunate for Moreno as Stefan is angered by Moreno’s delays and buys out what had seemed his unbreakable contract with the MoJ to force him to go back to the Circle to where Travis has in the meantime debunked.

In the Circle, where such things as APAs are non grata and those entering who are chipped must wear a nullifying bracelet, Moreno has an unwelcome reunion with his father and discovers the link between the dead Casales’s activities and the US gov-corp’s and Stefan Gabor’s plans for an Atlas 2.

It’s all well done and readable enough – Newman can write – but, while at least in this instalment the derivation of Newman’s characters’ expletive of choice, JeeMuh, is explained, it still seems torturously awkward to me.

Pedant’s corner:- Written – or at least published – in USian, lasagna (lasagne,) meters (metres,)  “‘They were just pr0n really’” (‘just porn’ seems to be the sense.) “none of the outer doors were locked” (None … was locked.) “Either side of the drive” (Each side,) “outside of” (just ‘outside’,) “off of” (just ‘off’,) “the brain activity created by keywords relating to the case are also attended to” (the brain activity …. is also attended to,) “‘an end to that pain, you. Held. On.” (‘to that pain. You. Held. On.’) “to the the” (only one ‘the’ needed,) “have me made into someone who” (have made me into someone who,) syllabi (in English the plural of syllabus is syllabuses. Syllabi is a false plural used by people who think the word derives from Latin. It doesn’t.)