Up Jim River

Veteran SF writer Flynn returns to the world he introduced in 2008's The January Dancer : a human-colonized galaxy thousands of years in the future, on the far side of a dark age that has reduced our era to the stuff of legends and hokey place-names. League superoperative Bridget ban goes missing while searching for an artifact that will protect the League from the Confederacy. When her employers give her up for dead, Bridget's flame-haired daughter, Méarana, turns to one of her mother's ex-lovers, scarred and bitter Donovan, whose work for the Confederacy left him with a shattered mind and seven personalities. The pair retrace Bridget's final steps, accumulating allies and enemies—sometimes difficult to distinguish—on each exotic world they visit. Flynn's tale is self-consciously retro in its sensibilities, with florid prose and a straightforward, conventional plot. (Apr.)