Changes

With the death of two leading political powerhouses, the government of Earth is under threat of revolution. The only people able to investigate are the agents of the Fleet Bureau, a body set up to offer a neutral political standpoint. This means that Special Agent Von Kodiak finds himself in the heart of government when he would much prefer to be stamping out the Spider menace. However, the two instances may be more closely linked than he can imagine as the Spiders’ AI is working on the espionage front as well as building giant eight legged freaks.

''Star Wars: The Clone Wars'' taught us that no matter how much we love a science fiction universe, no one wants to watch/read all about politics in a made up world. Christopher seems to have not heeded this lesson from recent history and creates a book that should be about fighting giant mechanical spider in space and instead makes it a book about space politics. The first third is a rather plodding affair as we learn about the structure of the Fleet that controls future Earth. Rather than building directly on from the events seen in ‘‘Burning Dark’’, ‘‘Machine Awakes’’ instead uses it as a trigger for the political upheaval back on Earth – a footnote in this story.