The Miranda Conspiracy

The Billion Worlds #3

by James L. Cambias

An ancient treasure in deep space holds the key to a deadly conspiracy which will shake the Billion Worlds of the Tenth Millennium.

At the end of the Tenth Millennium, Zee and his AI buddy Daslakh arrive on the icy moon Miranda, hoping to make a good impression on his girlfriend Adya's upper-class parents. Instead they discover that Adya's father is the target of a political conspiracy. While Adya tries to discover who is trying to to ruin the family fortunes and expel them from Miranda's exclusive ruling class, Daslakh and Zee go on the trail of a lost treasure in deep space. As they both dig deeper they run afoul of rival political factions, romantic complications, space mercenaries, octopus gangsters, and ruthless secret agents—and all the while dealing with interference from Adya's parents and party-going sister. Love, power, wealth, and honor collide in the floating cities and palaces inside Miranda.

It seems the time of prophecy and the Age of Law is it is time the prophecies will be fulfilled.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

About The Godel

“With this freewheeling story of an ancient, cunning artificial intelligence and its naïve human companion, Cambias (The Initiate) mashes humor, mystery, and looming apocalypse into a roundly satisfying space epic. . . . With plenty of fun moments along the way, this raucous adventure through the solar system’s distant future will appeal to any fan of lighter science fiction.” —Publishers Weekly

“Cambias makes his solar system feel very alive, with wildly different cultures on different planets and moons . . . It is far-future space opera that is astronomically contained and written with a lightning bolt.” —Warped Factor

Praise for Arkad's

“Far-flung adventure . . . Cambias offers up an entertaining coming-of-age novel filled with action and surprises. His aliens are suitably non-human in mannerisms, attitudes, and objectives, and his worldbuilding suggests a vast universe ready for further exploration. Readers . . . will find this hits the spot.” —Publishers Weekly

“. . . a classic quest story, a well-paced series of encounters with different folk along the way, building momentum toward a final confrontation with Arkad’s past…[with] a delicious twist to the end.” —ALA Booklist

“Cambias has achieved a feat of an expansive, believable setting with fascinating aliens, compelling mysteries, and a rich sense of history.” —Bookpage

“Drop a teenage boy into a distant planet chock-full of colorful aliens—with troubles all their own. Stir, flavor, apply heat. A tour de force in the field, and great, quick fun.” —Gregory Benford

Praise for the work of James L.

“Beautifully written, with a story that captures the imagination the way SF should.” —Booklist starred review

“An engaging nail-biter that is exciting, fun and a satisfying read.” —The Qwillery

“An impressive debut by a gifted writer.” —Publishers Weekly starred review

“An exceptionally thoughtful, searching and intriguing debut.” —Kirkus starred review

“James Cambias will be one of the century's major names in hard science fiction.

Genres: Science Fiction

384 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 4, 2025

About the author

I grew up in New Orleans, was educated at Chicago, and currently live in New England.

Reviews

[Rob Caswell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve enjoyed the stories in Cambias’ solar-system-restricted Billion Worlds series. His robustly populated planetary system is inhabited by a variety of sapients: from baseline humans, to genetic human modifications, uplifted animal species, digitized personalities (from across the animal kingdom), and spectrum of pure AI’s.

While the stories feature adult language and a few sexual situations, the overall flavor feels like YA space opera. It’s good adventure fun. I know Cambias is a gamer and it wouldn’t surprise me if this was one of the backgrounds he uses for his RPG group. It’s certainly rife with possibilities and fun character possibilities.
Moving onto this book, specifically, I found it a real slow starter. It uses the main characters from the first Billion Worlds book, The Godel Operation, and drops them in a kind of homecoming scenario. The book takes a while before it gives the reader a good hook: a plot element to really care about and pull you through. Cambias’ chapter lengths are quite long, so it may take you 5-6 chapters before you’re able to find a solid investment in the story. It feels like book’s first half could use some serious tightening up to move things along more quickly.

Slow start aside, once Cambias’ starts laying down the clues… and when it starts to become apparent that all these disparate points are leading to something really big, things get briskly rolling. The story builds effectively with separated characters getting pieces of the puzzle which start to gel as they reunite and share observations. There’s a number of surprises and bait-and-switches along the way – in fact all the way to the epilogue! So Cambias did a great job in crafting how the whole picture comes together for our characters, resulting in a pretty satisfying conclusion.

Overall, it’s fun space opera in a fairly fresh background. I look forward to Cambias’ next exploration of the Billion World background.

[Henry Lazarus · Rating 3 out of 5]

James L. Cambias sends his characters to Adya’s home, a moon of Uranus. Miranda is ruled by an oligarchy of sixty families and Adya’s father has financial problems that will push him out of the sixty families. Adya’s sister is a popular influencer, but she can’t help with The Miranda Conspiracy (hard from Baen) that threatens to overthrow all the families ruling the moon. Miranda is a place with deep seas and a light enough gravity that people can fly. Zee and the A.I Daslakh have to uncover the plot in order to save the stable society. This is a great series, but, alas, this may be the final book.

[Daniel Bensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cambias used to be one of the authors whose books I bought on sight. I still think about The Initiate and its meditation on moral desserts. The Godel Operation wasn’t as thoughtful, but it still had something to say about godlike AI and how not to be an egotist. The sequel, thought, had a hollow space inside it where there should have been an answer to the question, “what’s the point if your civilization is a sideshow to posthuman AIs?” In this, the third book, that hollow has grown enormous. There’s some action, some sex, some death, and none of it matters. I’ll pass on the next book.