In a fairly common setting for Drake's books, humanity has fallen into a period of barbarism after the collapse of an over centralised galactic empire. The people of Venus have managed to survive - the hellish nature of their atmosphere had kept pirates away during the collapse but it had meant that harsh decisions had to be made over who survived. Now, Earth and Venus were both expanding outward once more with the Southern Alliance and North American Federation jockeying to see who would sew up the few remaining automated factories with little thought taken to the position of the Veneran captains in their ceramic ships.

Drake can't write an uninteresting book and part of the fun is in working out what era of history he's basing his tales on (sometime very obscure ones imho!). In this case if you think of the situation pertaining in the mid 1500s and a bit later, you will have a general idea of the politics. ( )

1,000 years after interstellar society has collapsed, a new empire which is suspiciously like Canada rules most of the planets and their most valuable resources -- slaves and automated silicon chip factories. Two gentlemen from Venus set of to make their fortunes as what can only be described as slavers and pirates. They're clearly not nice people, but they are the heros of this book.

The book is very readable, and like other books by Drake it is clear that the heros aren't always nice, and are haunted by their crimes. Yet they continue, and in the end might have accidentally done something nice.

Overall, a good if different book.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/David_Drake/Igniting_The_Reaches.html ( )