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Edges (Inverted Frontier Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Linda Nagata (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 1,183 ratings
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From the Edge of Apocalypse: Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization—those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties—have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars. No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well. With a ship’s company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

Edges is a new entry point into the classic story world of Linda Nagata’s The Nanotech Succession.

From Karl Schroeder, New York Times Notable author of Ventus, and of Stealing Worlds: "In the Nanotech Succession, Linda Nagata crafted one of the great sagas of galactic-scale science fiction. Yet for every revelation and discovery we found another mystery—none so great as what destroyed the supposedly omnipotent, star-spanning civilization of the Hallowed Vasties. At last, in Edges, Nagata teases at an answer, while simultaneously upping the stakes. Edges is a taut story that asks how far you might push yourself, and how much of your own humanity you might have to sacrifice to save those you love. Edges bursts with ideas and proves once again that Nagata is one of SF's great worldbuilders."

"Edges runs on a lot of brain power, and it's an intellectually stimulating read that posits some truly intriguing questions and ethical dilemmas [...] While the bulk of Edges is interested in more heady affairs and the nature of mankind's place in the cosmos, Nagata's proficiency in writing action beats is certainly on strong and regular display [...] as this book ramps up to its dizzying, frenetic climax...." —High Fever Books
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  1. Book 1 of 4
    Inverted Frontier
  2. Print length
    406 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publication date
    April 2, 2019
  5. File size
    1283 KB
  6. Page Flip
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  7. Word Wise
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  8. Enhanced typesetting
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  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Edges is "a masterful effort, operating both at a slow burn and with a ratcheting intensity that comes to a stunning climax. Linda Nagata has once again given us a future that dances along a razor 's edge--entertaining, thrilling, humbling ... and hopeful, despite the threat, despite the danger, despite the sacrifice."
-- Sharon Browning, LitStack

"In the imaginary coffee-house of my mind, Nagata's Succession novels are hanging out with thematic and subgeneric cousins by Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks, Greg Bear, Greg Benford, Greg Egan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Robert Reed, discussing the post-human condition, how many nanotechnologies can fit on the head of a pin, the nature and place of sentience in the universe, and whether there is a Long Game in which humankind can play and survive. There's a portrait of Olaf Stapledon hanging over the mantelpiece, along with a long-barreled raygun. Both are icons of the tradition."
-- Russell Letson, Locus

Edges "is exciting and stuffed with good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder ... There is real tension, real human relationships to deal with, cool technology, and an ending that promises more wonders ... It's a great deal of fun, exciting, scary. And now I'll have to read the rest [of the series]!"
-- Rich Horton, Strange at Ecbatan

About the Author

Linda Nagata is the author of high-tech science fiction, including the near-future thriller, The Last Good Man, and the Red trilogy, an intersection of artificial intelligence and military fiction. The first book in the trilogy, First Light, was named as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015. She has won the Nebula and is a two-time winner of the Locus award. Her work has also been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards. Linda has lived most of her life in Hawaii, where she's been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and an independent publisher. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.

Nicole Poole is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator, commercial voice talent, veteran soundpainter, and owner of the O. Gail Poole Collection. She is also a staunch supporter of the arts and travels around the globe with a mobile recording studio.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MBR4X9B
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mythic Island Press LLC (April 2, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 2, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1283 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 406 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 1,183 ratings

About the author

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Linda Nagata

Linda Nagata

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Linda Nagata’s work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards. She has won the Nebula and is a two-time winner of the Locus award. She’s best known for her high-tech science fiction, including the near-future thriller, The Last Good Man, and the far-future adventure series, Inverted Frontier.

Linda has lived most of her life in Hawaii, where she’s been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and an independent publisher. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
1,183 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the storyline exciting, complex, and interesting. They describe the book as a good, well-written, rare read. Readers also find the characters compelling and carefully drawn. They say the emotional content is inspiring and utterly believable. Readers praise the writing quality as excellent and sharp. However, some feel that profound ideas are scarce and there's endless exposition instead of action.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more
StorylineReadabilityCharacter developmentEmotional contentWriting qualityIdeasPace
31 customers mention "Storyline"24 positive7 negative

Customers find the storyline exciting, complex, and interesting. They also appreciate the author's unique ability to create intense drama. Readers describe the book as a truly suspenseful space opera with an intriguing central idea. They mention it's imaginative, inventive, and a great start to a great series.

"...drawn, the world building seems effortless, and the conflicts start in the first chapter and don't let up...." Read more

"This was a rough one for me. I made it though because the story was interesting I hoped that it would clear up, but it didn't...." Read more

"...of works that describe unnecessary detail, there is an intriguing storyline...." Read more

"...the story, I discovered that amount of turning points / significant events are low basically content / profound ideas are scarce, could be that..." Read more

22 customers mention "Readability"17 positive5 negative

Customers find the book well-written, engaging, and a rare read. They also appreciate the author's wonderful writing style. Readers mention the future is well-realized and the characters are enjoyable.

"Still a very good read. Not a compelling read though, I found it pretty easy to put the book down for days/weeks...." Read more

"...Like her other books this future is well realized and the characters are believable and relatable...." Read more

"Linda Nagata is a wonderful author. The level of precision in her writing is parallel to none...." Read more

"This a fantastic read that I just couldn’t put down. Nagata continually amazes with her ingenuity and insights...." Read more

16 customers mention "Character development"16 positive0 negative

Customers find the characters compelling and well-drawn. They say the plot is great.

"...her other books this future is well realized and the characters are believable and relatable...." Read more

"...She gives us jealous characters and shows how some of them become more hardened and ruthless as the novel progresses...." Read more

"...In a whole it's leaves good impression, the main heroes characters are built in convincing way and realistic. Now the "but" "however" etc part:..." Read more

"...Which I really enjoy!The characters are well formed, as is the universe in which they live. And die. And live again...." Read more

4 customers mention "Emotional content"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book emotional, inspiring, and believable. They also mention it has a very real and human heart.

"...they pulled me in with the hyper-realistic near future and utterly believable characters. Edges is a vastly different kind of book...." Read more

"...Edges is a technological marvel but also an emotional and inspiring book...." Read more

"...technologies, far flung imaginative adventures, and a very real, very human heart...." Read more

"...time line described throughout the course of the novel, I felt the human connection, more than just character development. I recommend!" Read more

4 customers mention "Writing quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality excellent. They appreciate the great rendering of characters and sentence composition.

"Book masterfully written in terms of language quality, style, sentence composition...." Read more

"...Nagata's prose is particularly sharp and lean; there aren't wasted words here...." Read more

"...I loved this book. Excellent writing, great rendering of characters and the universe, interesting original ideas, great rhythm to the story - I..." Read more

"Again, good writing and interesting characters and tech ideas. It’s fun to see two of Nagata’s worlds merging. Looking forward to Silver!" Read more

3 customers mention "Ideas"0 positive3 negative

Customers find the ideas in the book profound but scarce. They also say the book has endless exposition and long lectures on social issues.

"...points / significant events are low basically content / profound ideas are scarce, could be that author want to patiently spread those across trilogy." Read more

"...explain themselves to each other leading to endless exposition instead of any action." Read more

"The book was tedious and disappointing, with long lectures on social issues by the ship's AI, various deus ex machina ploys to prop up a plot that..." Read more

3 customers mention "Pace"0 positive3 negative

Customers find the book's pace glacial and hard to get into.

"...It takes time to work. It generates heat. It needs the relevant raw materials, and it is not invulnerable...." Read more

"...The story moved at a glacial pace for me...." Read more

"...It seemed hard to get into - it was after all a long time since the last contact with the world and the characters. But it revs up and gets going...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

josephmm
5.0 out of 5 stars a grand start to a great series
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2024
Verified Purchase
I review this having read the two follow up books

Strap in and enjoy the ride these books are big concepts and small wonders and human characters thrown into the universe where bodies can be remade and your essence reinserted …. A new kind of space opera
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Chris
4.0 out of 5 stars Not quite the story I was hoping for based on the summary
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2024
Verified Purchase
Still a very good read. Not a compelling read though, I found it pretty easy to put the book down for days/weeks. I'll pick up the sequel at some point, but not right away.
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Stephen R. Chambers
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2019
Verified Purchase
I had been a fan of Ms Nagata's writing via the "Red" books. I'm not normally a fan of Military SF but they pulled me in with the hyper-realistic near future and utterly believable characters. Edges is a vastly different kind of book. Set in the far future, humanity is living hidden among the stars. Concealing themselves from alien forces intent on wiping out all intelligent biological life. Like her other books this future is well realized and the characters are believable and relatable. The writing requires the reader pay close attention, a lot can happen on a single page; and I enjoyed all of them. I have seen other people compare this to Iain M. Banks writing. While that is not entirely off the mark Ms. Nagata puts her own spin on humanity in a galactic setting far in the future. Worth the read and looking forward to the next book in the series.
13 people found this helpful
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Randy Stafford
4.0 out of 5 stars Suspenseful and a Good Entry Point to Nagata's Nanotech Succession
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2020
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A space quest to determine what happened to the human homeworlds, games of deception played against alien berserker ships in deep space, and a mysterious castaway who wants to hijack that quest for his own ends – this novel returns to the universe of Nagata’s Nanotech Succession and takes place shortly after Vast.

Nagata says she crafted this to be a new entry point into the series, and she succeeded. I remembered little of the last two novels of the series, Deception Well and Vast and was able to pick up on the story quickly.

The Inverted Frontier of the title refers to the center of humanity’s expansion into space, the core from which man expanded outward. That core, the Hallowed Vasties, seems to have undergone some great change, the Dyson swarms around its suns have been dismantled. Thus humanity, at least in its altered version, exists only on the fringe planet of Deception Well.

The story opens with a Chenzeme courser approaching that planet. It’s not a welcome event, but it is one that has been prepared for since humanity fought a war against the Chenzeme, a mysterious alien race extensively using biological modifications and nanotech in its spaceships.

But the ship, the Dragon, turns out to unexpectedly be in friendly hands. Urban, part of the expedition at the center of Vast, has returned to Deception Well with a ship he commands. He’s imposed his will on the ship’s alien sentient technology, an experience later likened to having a foot on a murderer’s throat.

Urban’s not stopping at Deception Well, not even slowing down, but headed towards the Hallowed Vasties to see what happened there. He puts the call out for 10 volunteers to go with him.

He especially wants the local version of Clemantine, his old lover who went with him on that expedition, to join him.
Her body is revived from its “sleep” and her “ghost”, an electronic recording of her personality and memories, is beamed to the ship along with the unexpectedly large number of Deception Well inhabitants, 60 in all, that want to join Urban’s expedition.

Reminiscent of some of Peter F. Hamilton’s work, Nagata comes up with several uses and implications for the idea that human consciousness can be recorded, the resulting data modified and pruned and duplicated and incorporated into bodies. For instance, one of the volunteers memorably has trouble following Urban’s example of casually creating bodies, putting a ghost in them, and using them as disposable reconnaissance units. Also, there are not the resources to let all the volunteers incarnate physically, so their ghosts must inhabit the ship’s computer system.

But, when the ship meets, in the ruins of a world, a mysterious human called Lezuri who wants to use the Dragon for his own ends, a struggle for the ship and the fate of the expedition kicks into high gear.

While I criticized Vast for being a bit slow in parts, that certainly was not the case in this book of over 400 pages. Nagata quickly presents conflicts and resolves them and throws new ones up. Is Urban, showing up in a Chenzeme ship, trustworthy? Is Lezuri’s distress signal a trap? Can he be trusted?

Again, I’m impressed by how much emotion Nagata gets out of such sparse prose. She gives us jealous characters and shows how some of them become more hardened and ruthless as the novel progresses.

Nagata has never treated nanotechnology as magic. While her use of that now omnipresent bit of sf hardware is not as detailed as Wil McCarthy’s Bloom, she still treats it as a technology with limitations. It takes time to work. It generates heat. It needs the relevant raw materials, and it is not invulnerable. It’s possible I wasn’t paying close enough attention when reading Vast, but I think her explanations of Chenzeme technology are clearer here.
I did have a couple of quibbles.

First, Vytet, who is constantly changing her appearance and sex, seems a sop to modern transgender obsessions. To be fair, though, body switching and gender swapping has been a sf thing since at least John Varley. Even Poul Anderson, in The Boat of a Million Years, had characters undergoing sex change.

Second, I’m not sure why she decided to narrate the interludes with Vytet in the currently trendy second person. She could have kept their immediacy and mystery and used traditional third person voice.
7 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars This book is space opera fantasy, it isn't science fiction in a literal sense.
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2023
Verified Purchase
Book masterfully written in terms of language quality, style, sentence composition. In a whole it's leaves good impression, the main heroes characters are built in convincing way and realistic. Now the "but" "however" etc part:
1. As most of fantasy / fiction writers, author pictures relationships and characters in a way that doesn't reflect cultural changes that inevitably would arise due to development of technologies that allows self modification. It isn't something crucial or new - most of writers fails from that point of view.
2. The conclusion part doesn't sounds reasonable or rational in any way e.g. would be more interesting to find different reasons for continuation of story.
3. When I tried to retell the story, I discovered that amount of turning points / significant events are low basically content / profound ideas are scarce, could be that author want to patiently spread those across trilogy.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative, well-written, briskly paced but well thought-through.
Reviewed in Canada on February 18, 2021
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Imaginative, well-written, briskly paced but well thought-through.
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SteamDave
5.0 out of 5 stars Hard SF
Reviewed in Italy on July 28, 2020
Verified Purchase
One of the absolute best SF novels I read in a long time: great premise, wonderful characters, great set pieces and a lot of ideas. An adventure story that also tackles technology, psychology and politics.
Linda Nagata has become instantly one of my favorite authors.
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Jacobo Navia
5.0 out of 5 stars interesting
Reviewed in France on July 4, 2020
Verified Purchase
this book is full of ideas, concepts, and it presents at last a coherent view of things

most of sci fi worlds are just a ridiculous extrapolation of today. in the year 3000 the hero buys a new apple computer..

this book is different
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D. Reul
5.0 out of 5 stars Complex Space Opera with a punch
Reviewed in Germany on October 19, 2019
Verified Purchase
Having read most of Linda’s previous books, I was well prepared to not expect anything predictable and I wasn’t disappointed. Tackling social issues, moral dilemmas and consequences. Every action causes an reaction and sometimes our past comes back to haunt us. This is Space Opera with capital letters. The scope expands rapidly as we delve deeper into the story and learn more about the world. Reading the previous books is not required, but it adds some welcome background. The next book will open up the world of broken gods and mysteries even more and I’m all here for that. Absolutely recommended!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great follow-up to the classic VAST
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2019
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I've been waiting 20 years for a new entry in the Nanotech Succession series, and it was well worth the wait. EDGES is a thrilling, hard SF adventure story of exploration and danger. The action is well described and I really cared about the characters. At the same time it explores the different modes of living in which future post-humans might exist in a fascinating way. If you enjoy a combination of well thought out speculation and full-on action, then this book is for you.

Can't wait for the next entry in the Nanotech Succession - Inverted Frontier series.
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