Chaos Terminal is the rollicking sequel to Mur Lafferty’s Station Eternity—a fast-paced locked space station mystery with a fun and diverse cast.
Chaos Terminal
Mur Lafferty
Ace
November 7, 2023
In Station Eternity, the first book in the Midsolar Murders series, we were introduced to a sentient space station near Earth, and aliens of many different races who call it home. Humans are new to interspecies interactions, and regarded with suspicion by many. Mallory Viridian is a human who has preternaturally bad luck in having murders happen around her, and preternaturally good luck in solving them. As we learn, her luck in both cases is due to a link with the Sundry, a bee-like alien race who gather and sometimes analyze data.
I’m a fan of murder mysteries in general, especially when they are on the cozy and progressive side. Since I also love space opera, I am thrilled at the recent convergence of these two genres. My emerging need for corpses in (or from) space is being fed by a number of recent books: Malka Older’s Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti books, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson, Fugitive Telemetry in Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries, and Mur Lafferty’s Midsolar Murders.
In Chaos Terminal, we pick up soon after Station Eternity left off. Mallory feels ill for reasons she can’t identify, and her connection with the Sundry seems impaired. After a hefty dose of exposition to get readers caught up on the events from the previous book, Lafferty picks up breakneck speed and the plot zooms along with resurfacing friends and foes for Mallory, a misbehaving space station, and intense political situations for characters of other races. And, of course, murder.
Sequels have a juggling act balancing the need to remind readers what happened last time with the need to get things moving this time. Lately I’ve read a lot of sequels, such as The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older, and System Collapse by Martha Wells, which just toss a reader right in. For those I strongly recommend having the previous book fresh in your mind when you approach the sequel.
The beginning of Chaos Terminal felt slow in contrast, because it was reminding me of the complicated, interlocking events of Station Eternity. The excerpt shared by the publisher is part of that set up, and thus slower than the majority of the book. However, about 15% of the way through my ebook, when the pace picked up, I was glad to have had the refresher, and the rest of the book just flew by. For this reason, while I still prefer reading series in order, I think you could easily pick up Chaos Terminal and read it before Station Eternity, as long as you don’t mind some plot spoilers for Station Eternity.
In Chaos Terminal, the murder mystery itself is just one of the many things going wrong on the space station. A new delegation of humans, including a mix of scholars, diplomats and tourists, arrives on the station and at their own welcome celebration one of them is murdered. As Mallory has grown to expect because of her link with the Sundry, the group of humans includes a lot of people with coincidental ties to Mallory herself.
As she begins to investigate the murder of the newly arrived human, she is reminded time and again of her own past on Earth, when she knew these people. She is also hampered by the fact that solving this murder is not a priority for the other races on the Station, as so many other things are going wrong. A comedy of errors ensues that reminds me of intricately plotted madcap comedies like Bringing Up Baby. We are joyfully along for the ride, hurtling toward set pieces that are satisfying when we arrive at them.
I eagerly look forward to devouring more in the Midsolar Murders series in the future.
