With The Prodigal Sun, the first volume in their "Evergence" series, Sean Williams and Shane Dix offer a few interesting twists on the far-future space opera, but sophisticated fans of the genre may find it difficult to work up much interest.

In theory, Prodigal Sun tells the story of a simple human amidst epic events. Unfortunately, while the universe Williams and Dix have created is complex, it suffers from being overly generic and under-detailed, while the "epic events" lack coherent cause and the "simple human" protagonist is bland and annoying.

In short, it's not a great surprise that Roche ends up getting assigned to the relatively menial duty of staying attached to an artificial intelligence known as "the Box" as it makes its transit across the galaxy.

But, as fate would have it, she ends up running for her life on a prison world, along with the Box, a genetic superman known as Cane, and a psychic girl called Maii. All three supporting characters are competently written, leading one to wonder why the authors saddled the book with Roche's viewpoint.

And the plot fares little better. Of the several major plot twists, about half are so blatantly telegraphed as to feel degrading to the reader's intelligence, while the rest manage to be surprising only by coming completely out of the blue, with no logical motivation.

Interstellar, military flourishes
The Prodigal Sun is not completely without merit. The technical facets of Williams and Dix's model of space flight seem interesting and could potentially provide further books in the series with many interesting scenes.

Unfortunately, almost all of the action in this first book is planetbound and, barring a few brief scenes at the beginning and end of the book, most of the technology presented is nothing but souped-up radios, helicopters and rifles.

Also of note was the integration of the Box's electronic warfare techniques with conventional battle tactics, a good example of bringing a traditional science fiction setting up to speed with modern thoughts on the importance of information flow in combat. However, even this is hamstrung by the characterization of the Box as an unstoppable juggernaut in the field of electronic infiltration, removing much of the tension from such sequences.

At long last (the book is 400 pages long), the authors provide an annoying finale that feels like they were groping for something to justify Roche's presence, but it only drives home this reader's impression that she had been essentially dead weight for the story thus far.

This hasty denouement further weakens Prodigal Sun by revealing the entire book to be little more than an overture for the next installment in the series. Granted, Williams and Dix would like us to buy their next book, but it would still have been nicer if they had provided readers with more in this first volume than a cobbled-together explanation for why this group of fractious misfits are traveling around in a hyper-advanced spaceship.