Corsair

March 16, 2015
Unlike Cambias’s promising and strikingly imaginative debut novel (A Darkling Sea), this sophomore effort has little appeal. David Schwartz, the self-styled “Captain Black, the Space Pirate,” parlays his computer skills into a lucrative criminal career, remotely redirecting valuable shipments of helium being sent from the Moon to Earth’s “hungry fusion power plants.” Unfortunately, one of his escapades attracts the attention of his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Santiago, now an Air Force officer, who identifies him as the culprit and, after a dramatic outburst, spends the rest of the book in a no-holds-barred effort to defeat him. Schwartz’s idea of the good life mostly involves bedding beautiful women and abetting serious bad guys, but the former soon bore him, and the latter try to kill him. Cambias’s easy familiarity with technology is not enough to save this book from its flat characters and sloppy plot; the loose ends are glaring and the twists are obvious to the reader long before Captain Black sees them coming.

March 15, 2015
Near-future science-fiction thriller from the author of A Darkling Sea (2014). With nuclear fusion a reality, Westinghouse has set up a base on the moon to mine helium from the lunar regolith. Each shipment is worth 2 billion Swiss francs, and cybercriminal David Schwartz, who calls himself Captain Black the Space Pirate, specializes in hijacking them. Air Force Capt. Elizabeth Santiago, mission director for monitoring the hijackers, suspects Captain Black is Schwartz (they had a brief affair while she attended MIT) but can't prove it. While trying to prevent a hijacking, she exceeds her orders and is reassigned to an Air Force-sponsored private company in Florida that is developing new mobile satellites and needs a mission director. Again she oversteps her orders and tries to weaponize a satellite. The mysterious Col. Ghavami contacts Schwartz, meanwhile, and hires him to hijack a shipment. Schwartz finds himself in Pakistan, patrolled by a gang of thugs and chafing under what he considers Ghavami's unnecessary restrictions. Schwartz escapes from Pakistan-his location is immaterial; he can hack into systems and pull off the hijack from anywhere-only to find that his carefully constructed cover is beginning to unravel. Eventually a chance encounter will bring Schwartz and Santiago in contact. Unfortunately, Cambias has to wrench and hammer his thin plot to fit all this. Neither do the main characters convince: Schwartz, with an annoyingly adolescent mentality, often seems amazingly dim, while it's hard to understand how even the Air Force could tolerate Santiago's chronic insubordination. And savvy readers will see where it's all going about halfway through. Still, the action is brisk against colorful international locations, the hijacks well-handled and exciting. A potboiler that fans of Cambias' previous excellent work will wish to investigate.

April 15, 2015

Mining the moon for Helium3 is a big business--large enough to attract pirates determined to hijack the cargo for their own profit. David Schwartz is a hacker and a space pirate who runs elaborate heists from a laptop in luxury hotel rooms, but this time he's working for ruthless killers. Elizabeth Santiago is an air force officer who was in charge of one of the helium mining ships David boosted, and she is determined to catch him this time. VERDICT An entertaining, near-future adventure story from the author of A Darkling Sea. The pathetically venal character of David is unappealing but well crafted, balanced by the equally flawed but dogged Elizabeth. The scenario of energy crises leading to mining the moon seems wholly believable, as do the criminals preying on the new industry.

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