title: The Aftermath: Book Four of The Asteroid Wars
author:  Ben Bova 
description: Hugo-winner Bova's fourth Asteroid Wars novel (after 2004's <i>The Silent War</i>) is a bewildering attempt to exploit loose ends. When crazed assassin Dorik Harbin disables the spaceship <i>Syracuse</i>, an ore-carrier run by Victor Zacharias, Victor is forced to jettison an escape pod containing his wife and children. Unfortunately, the Zacharias family's desperate efforts to survive are lost among a host of other stories. While son Theo and daughter Angela battle incredible odds to make their way back to inhabited space, Victor steals another spaceship, <i>Pleiades</i>, and goes looking for his family and <i>Syracuse</i>. Various other characters, including Harbin, who becomes a repentant priest named Dorn, go on quests in other spaceships. Chapters are named for the spacecraft in which they take place, which helps orient readers, but Bova doesn't focus enough on the technical features of these ships or the natures of those in them to bring either to life. The action remains equally muddled. <i>(Aug.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text:   
  
  A hundred years ago, The Sisters came, a string of asteroid strikes that
  destroyed human civilisation and brought on a decades-long winter.
  
    
  
  Now, communities are starting to rebuild, and trying to piece together the
  knowledge that was lost. The old tools are broken, superstition is rife, and
  the land is hard and unforgiving.
  
    
  
  And some, inevitably, have dreams of conquest.
  
    
  
  _The Aftermath_ tells the stories of a future on the edge of survival.
  
  ![](Images/image00160.jpeg)
  
    
  
  First published 2018 by Solaris
  
  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
  
  Riverside House, Osney Mead,
  
  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
  
    
  
  ![](Images/image00156.jpeg)
  
    
  
  [_www.solarisbooks.com_](http://www.solarisbooks.com)
  
    
  
  ISBN: 978-1-78618-105-3
  
    
  
  Copyright © 2018 Rebellion
  
    
  
  Cover art by Sam Gretton
  
    
  
  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been
  asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
  
    
  
  This is a work of fiction. All the c