Hostile Takeover

by Susan Shwartz

CC Williams is a financial analyst who's on the fast track of life and is determined to stay there. She clawed her way out of the hell of the powerless underclass and keeps herself grimly focused, with nightmares of either being frozen into a shipsicle and sent to the Outer Rim or dying slowly as the authorities harvest her limbs and other body part to pay off the massive debts she accrued getting where she is. When the multi-planetary company she works for sends CC to audit the far flung Vesta Colony to learn why assets keep hemorrhaging away, she knows this is her big chance to make the Ultimate Career Move and be finally free. Vesta turns out to be unlike anything CC has ever seen and the deeper she delves, the more twisted things get until her life--not to mention her career--hangs in the balance. CC finds herself confronting not just insider trading and fraud, but attempted murder as well. Who's at fault? She's got a colony of suspects, including old friends, old rivals, and a dashing EarthServ pilot who knows a whole lot more about CC and her world than he's letting on. Will CC find out in time--or will the takeover she fears turn not just hostile but deadly?

Genres: Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fiction

368 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Writes with Shariann Lewitt as Gordon Kendall.

She received her B.A. in English from Mount Holyoke College in 1972 and a PhD in English from Harvard University.

Reviews

[Pierre Hofmann · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was nearly a DNF for me. I continued to read it until the end to see whether the action would become more interesting as the story progressed. This was not the case. The writing style is mediocre, I had a hard time visualizing rhe settings. The main character is unlikeable and we are spared none of her musings, ramblings and thoughts. The plot is full of inconsistencies. Most especially, the 'first encounter' with aliens is unrealistic. Why should an alien species which is far more advanced and has mastered faster-than-light travel, choose to trade with the colony of a small asteroid, rather than with the mother planet - which does not even become aware of the existence of the aliens and their presence in the solar system? And so on and so forth. A big disappointment for me.

[Gail Gibbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heaven help me, I liked this one. It died a quick death back in 2004, available in hardcover only, and I found my copy at the bottom bin of the Friends of the Library sale. I enjoyed it because she's an accountant. In space. With lots of accounting in-jokes which I got and enjoyed. True, she's somewhat Too Stupid To Live, but only because she doesn't believe anyone would kill over falsified financial statements. Silly girl. Oh, yes, it's also somewhat sexist, with all the constant rescuing by the handsome hero, but generally just a fun, quick read.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Shwartz (b. 1949) co-authored five Star Trek novels and has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards. Hostile Takeover, her most recent stand-alone novel, is structurally flawed but still worth reading. In the near future, corporations have replaced traditional governments. Execs travel in luxury to colonies in the asteroid belt, while steerage-class passengers travel to the belt as “shipcicles” to be thawed out only when their indentured labor is needed. Protagonist C. C. Williams is sent to the Vesta colony to quietly audit its books but soon finds herself the target of an assassination. Most of the action is packed into the last quarter of the plot, and I wish that C.C. had more scenes in which she exercised her forensic talents.

[Kirsten Simkiss · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is just wholly unsatisfying. I DNFed this book at page 100 because, honestly, nothing has happened. While I don’t dislike the main character, I don’t like her either. The side characters are either surly or shifty and not fun to read about. Plus, the cover art is completely inaccurate to the book. The main character is an auditor and basically info dumps how society works for the first 100 pages.

I did appreciate the nod to Star Trek, but this just isn’t a great book. I don’t recommend it.

[Catherine Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't usually read much science fiction, but this was an exciting and fun book. To make it even better, I was still reading it during the recent launch of an American spacecraft, Dragon Endeavour to the International Space Station.

[Steve Bender · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tarted this book before I realized I had already read it. I couldn't put it down. A good mix of SF and Wall Street financing. Highly recommended.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Salarywoman Caroline Cassandra "CC" Williams, sent to the asteroid belt to audit Vesta Colony’s finances, finds herself caught in an interstellar hostile takeover by alien pirates.

[Kalpar Kalpar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is definitely a product of the early 2000s and it shows its age.

[Text Addict · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more, but the future world portrayed by Shwartz pissed me off so much that I had to set it aside repeatedly so I could cool off.

It's actually a typical extrapolation-from-the-present near-future SF world, in which financial-services veteran Shwartz contemplates what would happen if the whole world were dominated by that industry. More than it is now, that is. So much so that people are divided into three classes: the poor, stuffed into crime-ridden crowded "insulae" with only the thinnest thread of hope of escape; the wealthy, insulated from (but not immune to) financial risk; and the middle class, who live in fear of losing a job, falling into debt, and being shipped off to the asteroidal colonies in cryogenic suspension and to indentured servitude (or even involuntary organ donation).

The protagonist, CC, escaped from poverty into the middle class and lives in that fear (waking up multiple a week in sweating, terrified nightmares). The inevitable result of these circumstances, in which even a brilliant and creative analyst like CC could easily wind up on the garbage heap, is that the middle class salarymen behave pretty much like ferrets tied up in a sack. Apparently they are not really paid all that well, making it very hard for them to stay out of debt (and unable to save up for large expenses?), their credit ratings are monitored constantly for imprudent discretionary spending, and their behavior is expected to fall within rigid but unwritten lines at all times. Otherwise they get "downchecked" and if their fiscal and social credit ratings get too low, they'll suddenly become unemployable.

As I said, terrifying and infuriating. Shwartz makes CC's terror and determination very real - as well as her intelligence and serious research addiction (which endeared her to me considerably, of course).

The plot revolves around CC's audit of questionable activities at Vesta Colony, various attempted murders of CC, and eventual discoveries that were great to read but don't add much to the spectrum of SF ideas. It's the setting that does that.

Pay no attention to the cover, by the way. It should've been a representation of CC's 3D data matrix, not a ridiculous intimation of physical combat that didn't happen.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Action packed - though, hazrd to get started

[Dan Fiorella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wall Street Meets Close Encounters

If you think Wall Street runs things now, wait until you see what they manage to do in the future. A taut mix of corporate chicanery and sci-fi.