Toccata System Complete Trilogy

Toccata System #1-3

by Kate Sheeran Swed

Enemy assassins unite in a single stop the AI-led attacks on their star system.

From Book One, Parting
Raised by a heartsick AI, she’s programmed to kill. And desperate to flee.

After growing up on an isolated space station, Astra dreams of solid ground. But with an AI guardian plugged into her head--and her nervous system--it’s not like she’s flush with choices. In fact, she’s got just use her training to carry out the rogue AI’s revenge. Her first mission? Assassination.

When her target flashes a jamming device that would guarantee her escape from the AI’s grasp, Astra sets out to steal it. But the AI’s plans are more dangerous than she suspected. Corrupted by heartbreak, the wayward computer is determined to infect the star system with a new order of digital tyranny.

Astra’s been raised to care for no one but herself. Now she’ll have to decide if she’s willing to trade the star system’s freedom for her own.

This set
Book 1: Parting Shadows
Book 2: Phantom Song
Book 3: Prodigal Storm
A bonus short story, "Fated Queen"

Paperback

First published November 5, 2019

About the author

Kate Sheeran Swed loves hot chocolate, plastic dinosaurs, and airplane tickets. She has trekked along the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, hiked on the Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Iceland, and climbed the ruins of Masada to watch the sunrise over the Dead Sea. She holds degrees in music from the University of Maine and Ithaca College, as well as an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University. Her stories are forthcoming or have appeared in the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Volume 5, Daily Science Fiction, Electric Spec, and Andromeda Spaceways. You can find her on Twitter @katesheeranswed.

Reviews

[Raj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of a SFWA StoryBundle, I really bought the whole thing for this, and it was totally worth it. Starting with a space station AI that raises a daughter to be an assassin to kill a man who spurned her, it picks that up and runs with it.

Interstellar travel is mentioned in the series, but this story is all set in the Toccata star system, in the planets, moons and space stations that inhabit that system. Each of the three novellas that comprise this series take different PoV characters, the first being Astra and the AI SATIS who raises her. SATIS sends Astra to kill Conor, the son of the man who turned her programming, years before, but Astra discovers that Conor, a genius in his own right, has a device that can jam AIs - Astra could be free of her tyrannical 'mother'.

The second and third books see the fallout of Astra's attempts, but focus on different PoV characters. Something I wasn't expecting from a space opera was a Phantom of the Opera story. The second novella in the series is a clear homage to that, with opera divas with masks (well, veils), secret passages behind mirrors and setpieces involving chandeliers. This one also deals with cyborgs and the prejudice they face. It's never clear just why this prejudice evolved, and I guess there's not much space to get into that in a short-ish story like this one, but it would have been interesting. Still, humans have never found it difficult to divide people into Us and Them.

I've had a lot of fun in the Toccata system. The bonus short story also in this omnibus edition deals with Fay and how she ends up with SATIS, deepening her character considerably. I've signed up to the author's mailing list to get another short story in the same universe and while I was on her website, I found details about Swed's other work. Both her superhero series and new space opera sound like something worth reading.