For generations Prsoper Station has thrived under the guidence of its Honoured Ancestress: born of a human womb, the stations's artificial intelligence has offered guidance and protection to its human relatives. But war has come to the Dai Viet Empire. Prosper's brightest minds have been called away to defend the Emperor, and a flood of disorientated refugees strain the station's resources. As deprivations cause the station's ordinary life to unravel, uncovering old grudges and tearing apart the decimated family, Station Mistress Quyen and the Honored Ancestress struggle to keep their relatives united and safe. What Quyen does not know is that the Honoured Ancestress herself is faltering, her mind eaten away by a disease that seems to have no cure: and that the future of the station itself might hang in the balance....
Ancestral memory implants and empire at war and family bonds strained... it helps to know this is a string of novellas, as much as this brings its characters to life and vivid inner conflict, there's a lot of setting for perhaps too many strands in this story.
