In the first book, The Comet’s Curse, the entire population of Earth is devastated by Bhaktul’s Disease, a comet-borne plague, and 251 teens, too young to be infected, are selected to represent the human race and sent off towards an out-system planet, in a spaceship run by an Artificial Intelligence computer system with an irreverent personality, named Roc. In The Web of Titan, the Galahad crew try to contact an outpost of scientists studying Saturn and its moons to find out if those adults were infected by the plague or not (reviewed respectively in ConNotations Volume 19, Issue 4, 2009, and 20.4, 2010).

In both previous books, the dangers were primarily external: sabotage by suicidal oppositionists in the first case, an alien mind-probe in the second. Now the troubles are internal. The Galahad crew has an elected council of five: Gap Lee, Engineering; Channy Oakland, Activities/Nutrition Director; Bon Hartsfield, Agriculture Department; Lita Marques, Health Director; and Triana Martell, Council Leader. All five were selected for their combination of technical and interpersonal skills; Bon may be dour, but all of them are highly ethical and absolutely dedicated to the mission. Their dedication is about to be tested. As they approach the hazardous pass through the debris-strewn Kuiper Belt, a charismatic leader named Merit Simms (great name, Dom! Love the irony!) organizes a Back to Earth movement. His timing couldn’t be better. The ship is experiencing technical glitches in Environment Control, and their surveillance system simply cannot anticipate all the erratic movements of the asteroids and boulders of the Kuiper Belt, any one of which could collide fatally with Galahad. After two very near misses, more and more of the crew join Merit in demanding an about face. To make the situation much worse, Lita has to deal with her first serious medical emergency, and it does not go well. This seeming failure fuels Merit’s rhetorical fires. Bon’s punching Merit in the face doesn’t help matters either.

Gap’s girlfriend, Hannah, is the quiet heroine of this story, for her logical arguments against Merit’s case, her mathematical analysis of the Kuiper Belt anomaly, and her intuitive leap to decipher the anomaly’s significance. Other story lines get carried further, such as Channy’s efforts to arrange a boyfriend for “ice queen” Triana, and there are several surprise revelations, but those are for readers to discover. ~~ Chris Paige