Chaos Terminal is the second installment in Lafferty’s Midsolar Murders series, books that center around a young woman named Mallory Viridian who, after aliens make contact with humans in what is our near future, flees to a sentient space station. Wherever she goes on Earth, murders inevitably follow (so much so that she, à la Angela Lansbury, writes murder mystery books about the cases after she helps local law enforcement solve them).
The first book, 2022’s Station Eternity, sees Mallory take up residency in the titular station as one of the few humans on board. There, despite her best efforts, the murders keep on coming, though more than one mystery is solved by the book’s end, including a sci-fi answer as to why Mallory always seems to be around when murders happen.
Chaos Terminal picks up after the events of Station Eternity, and while you don’t need to have read the first to understand and enjoy the sequel, you will absolutely have the whodunnit of the first (and those other mysteries as well) spoiled. You’ll also have some catch-up on getting to know the cast of characters who make the station their home, but if you’re up to overcoming that hurdle that’s inevitable in most sequels, the book turns into a fun read.
I’ll do my best not to spoil either Midsolar Murders book in this review, but given this is a murder mystery series set in space, it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that the murder of at least one human once again takes place on Station Eternity soon after a new human delegation arrives… a delegation that not only includes the agent who Mallory helped solve murders on Earth, but also her best friend from high school, and her best friend from high school’s twin brother, someone she had completely forgotten about even though they harbored an unrequited crush for each other as teens.
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Chaos Terminal
And just like in the series’ first book, there’s more than one mystery going on in Chaos Terminal. There’s the requisite human murder, yes, but there’s also something going on across the space station. Eternity is essentially in sleep mode after its symbiotic host flies off on a planned trip, leaving Mallory as the point person on board for the Sundry, the wasp-like aliens who manage the moon-sized station’s life support, and also as the de facto representative of the station for the human delegation set to arrive. Mallory, however, is out of sorts and doesn’t understand why.
Everything, in short, is chaos! Just like the book’s title suggests. Creating that chaos is a a smorgasbord of characters of different species—there are the aforementioned Sundry, whose collective hivemind puts humanity’s best supercomputers to shame, and also the Gneiss, a rock-like species who live for centuries and “evolve” by absorbing the bodies of other species (which a couple of them did in Station Eternity, prompting one to morph into a spaceship and another, the impulsive and less-than-smart Tina, to become a dangerously armed mech). The other human residents on Eternity, particularly Xan, the stowaway soldier who went AWOL in the first book, have their own parts to play in how the events of Chaos Terminal play out. Add to that the five or six additional humans of note that come with the latest delegation, and you’ve got a panoply of chapters told from varying points of view.
It is, in short, a lot. But intentionally so, given the title of the book. And so, while one could say the cast of characters is arguably too many, having more potential suspects also arguably ups the intrigue of the whodunnit. And even though some of the clues nodding toward solving the case are obviously laid out, understanding why and how certain clues fit into the overall murder plot is appropriately harder to figure out.
Solving the human mystery, however, is only part of the enjoyment of reading this, and arguably not the most important part. This is a science fiction murder mystery, after all, and the sci-fi elements going on with the characters aboard Eternity are where the book shines, buoying up the story beyond the machinations around the human body count. Something, for example, is going on with the Sundry, and Lafferty’s reveal of what’s really going on is a fun foray into xenobiology. The rock-like Gneiss are also the cause and solution for much of the book’s problems, with Tina in particular bringing levity and proverbial face-palms whenever she wreaks havoc by trying to “help.”
Reading Chaos Terminal is more like trying to put together a puzzle while someone (perhaps the toddler-like Tina, who by the way is also Gneiss royalty) periodically flips the table over. In that vein, this is not an immersive book in that you likely won’t feel like you’re on Station Eternity yourself and walking the halls with Mallory. This book is character- and plot-driven rather than focused on describing locations with long paragraphs of prose.
If you like trying to suss out what the heck is going on with the folks on this poor station while getting peppered with character-driven flashbacks and unexpected shenanigans from quirky aliens, Chaos Terminal is a fun read. So go ahead: Embrace the chaos and try to solve the many mysteries—you’ll have fun along the way, even if you’re confused at times. And you’ll also likely learn more about certain species of wasps as a bonus.
Chaos Terminal is published by Ace.
Vanessa Armstrong is a writer with bylines at The LA Times, SYFY WIRE, StarTrek.com and other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog Penny and her husband Jon, and she loves books more than most things. You can find more of her work on her website or follow her on Twitter @vfarmstrong.
