This time, he's been tasked with recovering a stolen ship. An expensive, fast, artificially intelligent ship. It was stolen by Arum Gilger... a very bad man. Funny how expensive things are rarely stolen by genuinely kind, sweet people. But, Fergus is used to dealing with surly, dangerous characters; it comes with the job. What Fergus isn't used to is having such horribly inaccurate intel on his mission. Or running into any genuinely kind, sweet, redeemable people to actually care about. Or, for that matter, aliens. Not humanoid, but blue-skinned or "little green man" sort of aliens, of course - he's bought lunch from those, before, and counts a few as important contacts. No, he finds himself in a zone with elevated alien activity from an mysterious alien race known as the Asiig. The kind of aliens that "take" people from time to time and then either return them in an altered form or, perhaps, never return them at all. The kind of aliens that inspire a local response of broadcasting emergency warnings to its inhabitants and everyone sheltering in place until they're gone. That sort of "alien."
Fergus is going to have to use his head and keep his wits about him if he's to stay alive and find an opening to steal back that ship. Meanwhile, it seems that his arrival has unsteadied an already delicate balance of power in the system, which could lead to all-out war. Fergus is all alone in his quest, with the exception of a lichen farmer who is both angry with him and suspicious of him and whose help he doesn't want... and the occasional cooperation of the other powers-that-be who are threatened by Gilger's power play. Although, they don't tend to take unnecessary chances, which is probably why they were in power to begin with.
Before everything is done, Fergus will have to learn to be a little bit of a team player and will have to face his past on Mars that led him to shun others in the first place. But he can't give up; Fergus Ferguson always gets his ship...
I loved the world of Suzanne Palmer's Finder. The names of the locations in the Cernekan system, such as Mezzanine Rock, The Wheel Collective, Bugrot and Blackcans are delightfully descriptive, short-sighted and purely functional names, reflecting the amount of concern inhabitants in a space colony would likely place on naming their habitats. The tech experienced throughout the book - whether deadly or whimsical - also seems to ring "true." Everything in the book feels lived in and realistic in a very pleasing way.
Fergus Ferguson is an interesting character, as well - quite skilled at cobbling together whatever he may have on hand to solve the problem in front of him. It's entertaining to see him think his way out of really unpleasant predicaments. I would love to read more books following Fergus Ferguson; I hope Finder is just the beginning. Highly recommended.
