This is continuing saga of Mariesa van Huyten. The heiress and former CEO is haunted by the fear of the possibility of an Earth killing asteroid striking the planet, Flynn takes the reader through her complex plans involving all parts of the economy.The book is more about corporate intrigue and manipulation than activities in space. If you like that sort of story then this story has a lot to offer. If your interest is in the advances in technology and possible first contact situations then you will be disappointed. This book is more character driven than action oriented. Flynn shows his mastery of character development . He shows how the student of Van Huyten's first class of graduates from her private school mature and adapt to life in the adult world. He deftly intertwines these characters lives into the larger fabric of the novel. Despite Lodestar's excellent character development and some riveting and somewhat sequences of cyber warfare, I wish this book had taken a different direction. The second book in this series Rogue Star ended on a cliffhanger . Lodrstar barely references that ending. I found parts of the story dull. The redeeming factor of this series is its overall premise that Earth will one day encounter a planet killer asteroid. The series asks the question of how will we respond. ( )

The near-future (2030s) science was all right, but the book kept trying to be a harlequin romance novel, all "warm, yielding flesh" and "urgent thrusts". This, combined with the fact that there were so many characters that most of them were caricatures, made things more than a little comical at times. ( )