n the far future, Earth has been quarantined. Much of the inner solar system has been destroyed by a cloud of nanotechnology called the Ceres Storm. This disaster was perhaps unleashed by Darius, ruler of a past interstellar empire.
Young Daric has grown up in an isolated garden enclave on Mars. Daric, who is apparently a clone of Darius, lives with his older brother Jonas and a talking statue he calls Grandpapa.
One day, Daric is assigned a mysterious chore in a nearby city that is controlled by the powerful KayTee Clan. Guided by his "shade," an artificial intelligence speaking directly to his mind, he obtains a drink that provides instructions from Grandpapa to save Mars from a new Storm using "machineries" located on Earth.
After his return from the city, Daric is abducted and taken to Earth, where he meets two more Darius clones. He accesses the machines left there by Darius and leaves on one of the spaceships, which is filled with ghostly intelligences called Eidolons. He travels to an inhabited asteroid to seek more information and equipment.
He is again abducted by agents of KayTee and taken to Triton, where he lives for a time on the isolated estate of archeologist Thalmus Green and his young daughter Merode. They take Daric to Pluto's moon Charon, hoping that he can open the Ambry, another technological treasure trove apparently left by Darius. On the way, Daric is able to contact Grandpapa, who speaks of the plan to save Mars. Daric enters the secured underground facility to seek his unknown destiny.
An ambitious debut
Ceres Storm is an ambitious start to what promises to be one of SF's strangest and most complex far-future epics. The promotional copy cites Bester, Delany, Zelazny and Varley as influences, but the novel's baroque complexity and mysterious, almost imponderable, technologies evoke Gene Wolfe and Neal Stephenson, while the compact narrative style brings Joe Haldeman to mind.
Although much of the book is terse dialogue between Daric and various characters, often within his own mind, this short novel is not a quick or easy read. The attentive reader will slowly build an understanding of what is happening, who the characters are and how Herter's strange technologies work.
But readers will be left with more questions than answers. What exactly are the Eidolons? Are "pillows" and "shades" just different types of AI personal assistants, or something more? Who created the gendarmes that seem to protect humanity? What is the purpose of "weeforms"? What are the "Scales"? "Mori"? "Fingers"? "Sheens"? "Century roses"?
One suspects that most of the thousands of uncertainties raised by Ceres Storm will be answered in future novels. If Herter comes up with interesting answers to all of these questions, this could become one of SF's most memorable series.
