Bleh, no short synopsis this time. I really wanted to like this book, but the 'thriller' bits definitely outweighed the 'sf' bits, to the point where I got tired of reading about spies and started skimming forward. Maybe book 2 would be more my thing, but I'm not convinced that I want to buy the second book on such a thin liking for the first book. The writing was also very uneven, and at least at the beginning, would have done well to have been edited significantly.