n interesting scifi from the used shelves at the local bookseller.

Every ship in space takes weeks, even months, to get somewhere. Ships don’t stay staffed; they hire up most of the professionals they will need before each trip. And in Fool’s War, one of the professionals you need is a “fool”, that being a professional jester, guild certified, who comes aboard and does Tomfoolery for the benefit of the crew – you’ll even get a rating bonus if you do. So the Pasadena, captained and partially owned by the very Turkish, very Muslim Katmer Al Shei, is setting out for a routine trading mission, its new pilot and fool aboard, as well as something else. Something that can (and might well) destroy all human life.

Yet the ship’s fool is nobody’s fool. And the Fools Guild is hardly what it appears.

This was a very sound, very exciting and very logically laid-out book. Author Sarah Zettel really looking into the whole Muslim thing, creating characters and a world that was very deep and nuanced. Possibly the only complaint I have (a minor one) was that Master Evelyn Dobbs was not quite as funny as she could have been. She was cute and clever and turned out to be way more than I’d expected (hats off for that surprise) but her antics were a bit lame. But that’s a minor point – this story will have you thinking about the role of AI in our modern world, and wondering about the benefits (and costs) of its sentience.

So a good book all around – worth a glance at.

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