Envoy, by Andr Mos
The Book
Synopsis:
Nearly eight hundred years after a war that left Terra off limits to the rest of Sol System, humanity has devolved into a de-centralized and bureaucratic miasma.
Kep, a Guide to new arrivals to Sol, has her world turned upside down when an envoy from a nearly forgotten people returns as a diplomat from a distant system.
Now, she is caught in a race to keep corporations and guilds from obtaining an advanced foreign technology and to find a worthy power to gift it.
My Review
Envoy is a sci-fi novella, written by Andr Mos, which has some cool ideas and references, some elements with potential, but whose execution can be improved in my opinion. In the future there have been many changes, with the humanity going beyond the Sol system; and our main character, Kep, works as a guide for the new arrivals.
Kep is quite good at her job, blending herself into the arrivals, adapting her aspect to something familiar for those that have arrived; giving a sense of something known for those that have just got up from the stasis that big space travels require. Due to her abilities, she's tasked with receiving the Dacic envoy, who comes from a system whose contact was previously lost.
The plot is centered around how this contact devolves into an espionage war between different organisms that are trying to gain the control over it; ending Kep and the Dacics in the middle of this conspiration.
While the idea is great, the pacing feels a bit out of place, especially due to the huge amount of info dumps that there in this novella (which at least are quite interesting, such as the Dacic history, a homage to Romania); changing a bit the structure could have definitely helped.
Overall, it's a well-written novella, and I think sci-fi lovers might enjoy it more than me; there's potential hidden in Envoy.
Disclaimer: This novella has been read as part of the SFINCS. This review/rating only represents my personal opinion and it might differ with what the team decides.
