Spin State is a no nonsense science fiction novel that demands your unfettered attention from page one. Major Catherine Li is a veteran soldier, a young woman for whom her military career is her life. She has witnessed, committed, obeyed and forgotten more wartime horrors than any single human who has the capacity for suffering should be allowed to absorb. Her next tour of duty leads her back to her childhood planet of Compson's World. She is sent in to discover what lead to the death of a renowned genetic construct "Sharifi" during a supposed mining accident. The mines of Compson's world play a pivotal role to the network of ships which travel interstellar space as they are fuelled by condensate's mined by the disenfranchised populace - "A world where it took a whole family to earn a living and sweat cost less than diesel fuel." Life is no less grim on terra firma as the terraforming process on exacts a toll on those who eke out livings away from the mines. This is one of those novels which mixes cloak and dagger politics with corporate greed, menacing tensions from some very visible sources, invisible characters and artificial intelligences. Catherine Li's life is her own but her past, present and future destiny is controlled by others. You will be kept guessing until the end of this novel who orchestrated the mining deaths but long before that moment arrives Moriarty will have shoved so many tangled spider webs of deceit, lies, half truths, misinformation, subterfuge, acts of industrial sabotage and covert operations that you will genuinely not know who is to be trusted and who is set to be terminated. I feel that the relationship that Catherine shares with an A.I. named Cohen is something of a disguised friendship/love story masterstroke and keeps the novel's less than hectic and adrenalin filled pages percolating over.

Chris Moriarty first novel Spin State is one of those so rare phenomenon's that crosses our way so rarely that when you are fortunate enough to encounter it you must seize the moment and treasure it. I can truly say that their isn't one page of filler in its five hundred plus pages and it truly deserves to be designated as a classic.

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