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The Coruscant Series #2
Core Drift: A Coruscant Novel
For fans of Altered Carbon, Blade Runner, Queen of Angels or Leviathan Wakes, Core Drift is a sci-fi noir suspense thriller that features murder and revolution on a world watched over by an enigmatic AI, The Core.
Fan Zhaofeng is a hybrid human-cybernetic citizen in the People's Republic of Coruscant colony. Five years ago, he was little more than a slave. Now he's a citizen. Three years ago, he was a soldier. Now he's a healer. Two years ago, he was a killer. Now he's a fully reformed member of society. Unfortunately, his past won't stay behind him, and his only ally may be the woman who is trying to put him away.
Fan Zhaofeng is a hybrid human-cybernetic citizen in the People's Republic of Coruscant colony. Five years ago, he was little more than a slave. Now he's a citizen. Three years ago, he was a soldier. Now he's a healer. Two years ago, he was a killer. Now he's a fully reformed member of society. Unfortunately, his past won't stay behind him, and his only ally may be the woman who is trying to put him away.
310 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 2, 2021
150 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
F.X. Holden
22 books192 followersFX Holden writes action thrillers (The 'Aggressor' and 'Future War' Series) and Science Fiction (The 'Coruscant' and 'Red Legion' Series). He has been awarded two US Publishers' Weekly Stars (the Michelin Star of publishing), the US Readers' Favorite award for Best Political Thriller (twice, including in 2025), and the US Book Excellence award for Best Military Fiction!
FX Holden is a pen name for author Tim (TJ) Slee, winner of the HarperCollins Banjo Prize for Australian fiction and the US Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize for Fiction.
FX Holden is a pen name for author Tim (TJ) Slee, winner of the HarperCollins Banjo Prize for Australian fiction and the US Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize for Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 1, 2021
Not a review: call it author notes!
Every Coruscant novel springs from the Coruscant world I created as an idea several years ago, and wrote down as the 'Core Encyclopedia'. You'll find it below, and at the back of every Coruscant novel, so if you want to do some detective work you'll see the seeds for a lot of the planned plotlines for Coruscant novels in the Encyclopedia!
In the first three novels in this series I want to set a story on each of the main worlds of Coruscant. Deep Core was set on Tatsensui, Core Drift is set on PRC. The next in the series will be set on (small spoiler ahead) New Syberia. Each is its own self contained story but they have themes which together create a subplot, yet to be revealed, that will eventually bring all of the stories together for a big all-of-Coruscant climax in book four.
The books are well received but I have a disclaimer for fans of the FX Holden Future War universe - these are not action thrillers! Unlike the Future War series which is packed with action, these are suspense thrillers ... intended to have twisty, mind bending plots which build as you read along. Several of the reviews I have read of the Coruscant novels which state 'slow ... takes time to get going', are I suspect, from Future War fans. I've tried to write 'suspense thriller' in the blurbs now to help people realise what they are getting in a Coruscant novel.
I write the Coruscant novels whenever I need a break from the Future War series. If I run into a dead end on a Future War book or the inspiration level is low, I load up a new Coruscant book and start working on that instead. This process means the ideas for each keep marinating in my mind as I work on the other, so that when I return to them, I can just pick up and keep moving with some fresh energy and ideas. This process helps speed them along as I don't have unproductive days or weeks where I'm not at least working on something.
A lot of readers have asked how I can write so many stories - in the last couple of years I've averaged two Future War books a year and one Coruscant. My only answer is that I have stolen my work process from legendary crime writer, Elmore Leonard, who also produced two books a year while working full time in the advertising industry for many years. Elmore Leonard would get up early, or stay up late, writing on average two hours a day. He would write anywhere - in a cafe, train, on a bus. And he would write as long as the writing flowed, worrying about cutting and editing later.
That's me, too. When I explain to friends how I find the time beside my normal day job I point out to them I rarely watch TV except for the news. I don't spend hours on Facebook or Instagram. I do socialize with friends and family, but I don't use whole days/afternoons playing golf or tennis. I like long walks but I hate gardening.
I read, I research, and I write.
That's how I'm able to produce three novels a year and judging by the sales and the nice comments of 95 percent of readers, it's working so far! I sincerely hope you enjoy Core Drift. If you are interested in seeing how the next novel in the series - Core Melt - is progressing, just drop by my FB page and follow.
FYI: here is the Coruscant Primer...
COMMONWEALTH OF CORUSCANT
Core Encyclopedia v201.b
Coruscant (original designation Kepler-452b or Kepler Object of Interest KOI-7016.01) is an exoplanet orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-452 in the constellation Cygnus. It was the first potentially rocky super-PRC planet discovered orbiting within the habitable zone of a star very similar to the Sun.
The planet is about 1,400 light-years away from PRC and until the advent of the Alcubierre Warp Drive the only information about Coruscant was obtained from near-PRC observatories and predicted the planet could potentially sustain a citizen colony. The first unmanned probes to survey Coruscant, however, found a rocky planet with a climate which may have once been similar to PRC, but that was now without sufficient water or accessible reserves of nitrogen and oxygen to sustain citizen life.
Coruscant was however about 50 percent larger than PRC and subsequent surveys identified eleven moons in orbit around Coruscant. Of these, four were found to host indigenous non-sentient lifeforms and to be citizen-habitable. Over the next 200 years the following colonies were established:
Tatsensui (TS): a large ice moon entirely covered by frozen oceans but with low-level subsea volcanic activity leading to localized surface ice melting and minor seismic events. A colony was established at the northern pole, a continent of stable ice, free of significant seismic disruption. The economic engine of TS is the export of liquids and gases to the other colonies.
Peoples’ Republic Colony (PRC): a desert moon similar in many ways to Mars in the PRC system, with reserves of water and ammonia trapped beneath the surface of the moon and a seismically stable profile which, coupled with huge surface-spanning solar energy harvesters, has contributed to it becoming the second largest anti-matter production facility outside of Ganymede.
New Syberia (NS): the most volcanically active moon orbiting Coruscant, it has retained a near-PRC atmosphere. Several large and active volcanoes have created a runaway greenhouse effect conducive to large-scale, high-rotation intensive crop production. It was historically the most tenuous of the three colonies, as its orbit took it through the center of an asteroid belt every 24 years, but this threat was subsequently mitigated by a re-engineered ring of Warp Drives able to absorb the mass of the asteroid and project it to coordinates in empty space. This ring is known as the New Syberian Shield and serves also as a planetary defense system.
Orkutsk: NS is orbited inside the NS Shield by its own ‘mini-moon’, the geologically stable Moon of Orkutsk, which hosts a starship base and embassies, and is populated by a carefully regulated number of citizens of all three colonies. Orkutsk is the main point of entry into the Coruscant system for all interstellar traffic and interstellar/interplanetary trade is therefore the basis of the NS economy.
Due to the critical interdependencies of the three colonies (no one colony has the means or the raw materials to survive independent of the others), they were joined 100 years ago in a confederation known simply as the Commonwealth, with independent parliaments or Congresses, but a common foreign policy and trade pacts and a Commonwealth Court for settling disputes between colonial governments.
Conflicts and controversies
Energy starvation: The colonies of New Syberia and Tatsensui are frequently subject to disruption to anti-matter supply and thus to trade, base power and transport, due to political differences with the other colonies over the perceived high cost of raw materials and foodstuffs. One such dispute led to the brief Tatsensui-PRC War, won by Tatsensui, the outcome of which was a mutual non-aggression treaty, which did not however include New Syberia. As a part of the treaty, the constitutions and laws of Tatsensui and PRC were ‘harmonized’ in an act known as the Alignment. In reality, PRC retained self-governance but was forced to adopt the constitution and laws of the Tatsensui victors.
AI policy: Since the Tatsensui-PRC Alignment, Tatsensui and PRC share a common central AI platform, distributed across both worlds, known as the Core, to which all computer systems are linked. The prime directive of the Core is the preservation and promotion of all life on the Moons of Coruscant. To assist in the execution of its mandate, the Core has created bioware AIs, colloquially known as cybers – artificially grown biological bodies with cybernetically enhanced brains and bodies able to interface directly with the Core. Through its cybers the Core platform is claimed to support faster learning and evolution and to be designed for survivability should a calamity impact one or the other of the colonies.
Ordinary citizens of Tatsensui and PRC can query the Core as you would any large database and use it to support their daily lives in everything from simple navigational direction finding to advanced scientific research. Higher-level officials can query the Core using a natural language interface, and in this way seek advice or information on matters relevant to the health and welfare of their citizens.
New Syberia has rejected joining the Core platform and instead relies on a policy of multiple, totally independent AI cybers, each learning and evolving at their own pace. It claims similar survivability through the proliferation of these AIs across both New Syberia and its submoon, Orkutsk, and is currently the only colony with an ambition to establish a cyber-based sub-colony on Coruscant, though it cannot do so without the consent of the other colonies in the Commonwealth.
Orkutsk non-militarized zone: Due to its role as an interstellar transit hub and diplomatic station for all three colonies, in the ‘Treaty of Orkutsk’, declared at the birth of the Commonwealth, this central submoon was designated a neutral territory. Following an attempt by New Syberia to assert sovereignty over Orkutsk, the combined armed forces of PRC and Tatsensui occupied Orkutsk and a military skirmish followed after which New Syberia was forced to withdraw its claim. The Treaty was later amended to require all three colonies to permanently base at least 1,000 non-military personnel each on Orkutsk, to provide ‘diplomatic capital’ in case of new hostilities. In recent years, New Syberia has implemented a policy of basing only cybers on Orkutsk. The Tatsensui and PRC governments have established a Commonwealth Court Commission of Investigation into whether this constitutes a breach of the Treaty of Orkutsk.
Cyber Rights Movement (CRM): The CRM political lobby movement began on Tatsensui shortly after the creation of Core-Chained cyber lifeforms. It lobbies the governments of Tatsensui and PRC for self-determination for cybers. It has been successful in achieving several rights gains for cybers on Tatsensui, including the right to choose place of employment (within a limited range of occupations), right to economic independence, freedom of travel and domicile, the right to gender self-determination and freedom of association. Similar rights exist by forcible inclusion in the PRC Constitution due to the Alignment, but are a source of discontent among a large minority of the human PRC population who wish to see a return to the former status of cybers on PRC as slaves to human citizens.
The ultimate aim of the Cyber Rights Movement is full equality between cybernetic and human citizens across all of Coruscant.
Every Coruscant novel springs from the Coruscant world I created as an idea several years ago, and wrote down as the 'Core Encyclopedia'. You'll find it below, and at the back of every Coruscant novel, so if you want to do some detective work you'll see the seeds for a lot of the planned plotlines for Coruscant novels in the Encyclopedia!
In the first three novels in this series I want to set a story on each of the main worlds of Coruscant. Deep Core was set on Tatsensui, Core Drift is set on PRC. The next in the series will be set on (small spoiler ahead) New Syberia. Each is its own self contained story but they have themes which together create a subplot, yet to be revealed, that will eventually bring all of the stories together for a big all-of-Coruscant climax in book four.
The books are well received but I have a disclaimer for fans of the FX Holden Future War universe - these are not action thrillers! Unlike the Future War series which is packed with action, these are suspense thrillers ... intended to have twisty, mind bending plots which build as you read along. Several of the reviews I have read of the Coruscant novels which state 'slow ... takes time to get going', are I suspect, from Future War fans. I've tried to write 'suspense thriller' in the blurbs now to help people realise what they are getting in a Coruscant novel.
I write the Coruscant novels whenever I need a break from the Future War series. If I run into a dead end on a Future War book or the inspiration level is low, I load up a new Coruscant book and start working on that instead. This process means the ideas for each keep marinating in my mind as I work on the other, so that when I return to them, I can just pick up and keep moving with some fresh energy and ideas. This process helps speed them along as I don't have unproductive days or weeks where I'm not at least working on something.
A lot of readers have asked how I can write so many stories - in the last couple of years I've averaged two Future War books a year and one Coruscant. My only answer is that I have stolen my work process from legendary crime writer, Elmore Leonard, who also produced two books a year while working full time in the advertising industry for many years. Elmore Leonard would get up early, or stay up late, writing on average two hours a day. He would write anywhere - in a cafe, train, on a bus. And he would write as long as the writing flowed, worrying about cutting and editing later.
That's me, too. When I explain to friends how I find the time beside my normal day job I point out to them I rarely watch TV except for the news. I don't spend hours on Facebook or Instagram. I do socialize with friends and family, but I don't use whole days/afternoons playing golf or tennis. I like long walks but I hate gardening.
I read, I research, and I write.
That's how I'm able to produce three novels a year and judging by the sales and the nice comments of 95 percent of readers, it's working so far! I sincerely hope you enjoy Core Drift. If you are interested in seeing how the next novel in the series - Core Melt - is progressing, just drop by my FB page and follow.
FYI: here is the Coruscant Primer...
COMMONWEALTH OF CORUSCANT
Core Encyclopedia v201.b
Coruscant (original designation Kepler-452b or Kepler Object of Interest KOI-7016.01) is an exoplanet orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-452 in the constellation Cygnus. It was the first potentially rocky super-PRC planet discovered orbiting within the habitable zone of a star very similar to the Sun.
The planet is about 1,400 light-years away from PRC and until the advent of the Alcubierre Warp Drive the only information about Coruscant was obtained from near-PRC observatories and predicted the planet could potentially sustain a citizen colony. The first unmanned probes to survey Coruscant, however, found a rocky planet with a climate which may have once been similar to PRC, but that was now without sufficient water or accessible reserves of nitrogen and oxygen to sustain citizen life.
Coruscant was however about 50 percent larger than PRC and subsequent surveys identified eleven moons in orbit around Coruscant. Of these, four were found to host indigenous non-sentient lifeforms and to be citizen-habitable. Over the next 200 years the following colonies were established:
Tatsensui (TS): a large ice moon entirely covered by frozen oceans but with low-level subsea volcanic activity leading to localized surface ice melting and minor seismic events. A colony was established at the northern pole, a continent of stable ice, free of significant seismic disruption. The economic engine of TS is the export of liquids and gases to the other colonies.
Peoples’ Republic Colony (PRC): a desert moon similar in many ways to Mars in the PRC system, with reserves of water and ammonia trapped beneath the surface of the moon and a seismically stable profile which, coupled with huge surface-spanning solar energy harvesters, has contributed to it becoming the second largest anti-matter production facility outside of Ganymede.
New Syberia (NS): the most volcanically active moon orbiting Coruscant, it has retained a near-PRC atmosphere. Several large and active volcanoes have created a runaway greenhouse effect conducive to large-scale, high-rotation intensive crop production. It was historically the most tenuous of the three colonies, as its orbit took it through the center of an asteroid belt every 24 years, but this threat was subsequently mitigated by a re-engineered ring of Warp Drives able to absorb the mass of the asteroid and project it to coordinates in empty space. This ring is known as the New Syberian Shield and serves also as a planetary defense system.
Orkutsk: NS is orbited inside the NS Shield by its own ‘mini-moon’, the geologically stable Moon of Orkutsk, which hosts a starship base and embassies, and is populated by a carefully regulated number of citizens of all three colonies. Orkutsk is the main point of entry into the Coruscant system for all interstellar traffic and interstellar/interplanetary trade is therefore the basis of the NS economy.
Due to the critical interdependencies of the three colonies (no one colony has the means or the raw materials to survive independent of the others), they were joined 100 years ago in a confederation known simply as the Commonwealth, with independent parliaments or Congresses, but a common foreign policy and trade pacts and a Commonwealth Court for settling disputes between colonial governments.
Conflicts and controversies
Energy starvation: The colonies of New Syberia and Tatsensui are frequently subject to disruption to anti-matter supply and thus to trade, base power and transport, due to political differences with the other colonies over the perceived high cost of raw materials and foodstuffs. One such dispute led to the brief Tatsensui-PRC War, won by Tatsensui, the outcome of which was a mutual non-aggression treaty, which did not however include New Syberia. As a part of the treaty, the constitutions and laws of Tatsensui and PRC were ‘harmonized’ in an act known as the Alignment. In reality, PRC retained self-governance but was forced to adopt the constitution and laws of the Tatsensui victors.
AI policy: Since the Tatsensui-PRC Alignment, Tatsensui and PRC share a common central AI platform, distributed across both worlds, known as the Core, to which all computer systems are linked. The prime directive of the Core is the preservation and promotion of all life on the Moons of Coruscant. To assist in the execution of its mandate, the Core has created bioware AIs, colloquially known as cybers – artificially grown biological bodies with cybernetically enhanced brains and bodies able to interface directly with the Core. Through its cybers the Core platform is claimed to support faster learning and evolution and to be designed for survivability should a calamity impact one or the other of the colonies.
Ordinary citizens of Tatsensui and PRC can query the Core as you would any large database and use it to support their daily lives in everything from simple navigational direction finding to advanced scientific research. Higher-level officials can query the Core using a natural language interface, and in this way seek advice or information on matters relevant to the health and welfare of their citizens.
New Syberia has rejected joining the Core platform and instead relies on a policy of multiple, totally independent AI cybers, each learning and evolving at their own pace. It claims similar survivability through the proliferation of these AIs across both New Syberia and its submoon, Orkutsk, and is currently the only colony with an ambition to establish a cyber-based sub-colony on Coruscant, though it cannot do so without the consent of the other colonies in the Commonwealth.
Orkutsk non-militarized zone: Due to its role as an interstellar transit hub and diplomatic station for all three colonies, in the ‘Treaty of Orkutsk’, declared at the birth of the Commonwealth, this central submoon was designated a neutral territory. Following an attempt by New Syberia to assert sovereignty over Orkutsk, the combined armed forces of PRC and Tatsensui occupied Orkutsk and a military skirmish followed after which New Syberia was forced to withdraw its claim. The Treaty was later amended to require all three colonies to permanently base at least 1,000 non-military personnel each on Orkutsk, to provide ‘diplomatic capital’ in case of new hostilities. In recent years, New Syberia has implemented a policy of basing only cybers on Orkutsk. The Tatsensui and PRC governments have established a Commonwealth Court Commission of Investigation into whether this constitutes a breach of the Treaty of Orkutsk.
Cyber Rights Movement (CRM): The CRM political lobby movement began on Tatsensui shortly after the creation of Core-Chained cyber lifeforms. It lobbies the governments of Tatsensui and PRC for self-determination for cybers. It has been successful in achieving several rights gains for cybers on Tatsensui, including the right to choose place of employment (within a limited range of occupations), right to economic independence, freedom of travel and domicile, the right to gender self-determination and freedom of association. Similar rights exist by forcible inclusion in the PRC Constitution due to the Alignment, but are a source of discontent among a large minority of the human PRC population who wish to see a return to the former status of cybers on PRC as slaves to human citizens.
The ultimate aim of the Cyber Rights Movement is full equality between cybernetic and human citizens across all of Coruscant.
May 31, 2022
Strong story, fascinating characters
Mr. Holden weaves another great yarn. It's a fascinating who dunnit with a surprising twist. Highly recommended. Hard to put down.
Mr. Holden weaves another great yarn. It's a fascinating who dunnit with a surprising twist. Highly recommended. Hard to put down.
September 6, 2023
Science fiction or Pshycokogical thriller?
This book has an interesting plot \. a mix of science fiction with a pshucological thriller. And that introdices a huge problem for the reader is a proper understanding of the plot os important. The story is also told by using different point od view or voices. Amd that's a problem per se with the first person narrator, Fan Zhaofeng, who os as well the main character in the story, Fan is narrating his version of the events untill the moment of his death but, if he is death, he cannot be weitting at the end of his life, evem if he is a cyber. The author thinks he solved the connondrum by having Fan states that "he needs to write a few notes before his death. And Fan comitted two murders by teleporting into confined and secured spaces but he didn;t have the technology to do so, just the theory. So it should be clear that the twin Fan Zhaofeng mist be real and an invention of The Core, and not an invention in the mind of Fan, who according tofis doctor is suffering grom multple personalitu dissirder. A complicated plot and I'm not sure I've got it right.
This book has an interesting plot \. a mix of science fiction with a pshucological thriller. And that introdices a huge problem for the reader is a proper understanding of the plot os important. The story is also told by using different point od view or voices. Amd that's a problem per se with the first person narrator, Fan Zhaofeng, who os as well the main character in the story, Fan is narrating his version of the events untill the moment of his death but, if he is death, he cannot be weitting at the end of his life, evem if he is a cyber. The author thinks he solved the connondrum by having Fan states that "he needs to write a few notes before his death. And Fan comitted two murders by teleporting into confined and secured spaces but he didn;t have the technology to do so, just the theory. So it should be clear that the twin Fan Zhaofeng mist be real and an invention of The Core, and not an invention in the mind of Fan, who according tofis doctor is suffering grom multple personalitu dissirder. A complicated plot and I'm not sure I've got it right.
August 31, 2021
What If?
Holden books always make me think. I like that. This time, a planet has been colonized (by Chinese if the hard-to--pronounce Chinese names are significant), a class of people have been subjugated, and a peoples' revolution has begun. The plot is traditional, but the details are unique. As in the Future Wars series, Holden takes current events and asks,"What if....?" He then writes a page-turning novel. The ending is a cliffhanger. I can't wait to see where he takes us from here.
Holden books always make me think. I like that. This time, a planet has been colonized (by Chinese if the hard-to--pronounce Chinese names are significant), a class of people have been subjugated, and a peoples' revolution has begun. The plot is traditional, but the details are unique. As in the Future Wars series, Holden takes current events and asks,"What if....?" He then writes a page-turning novel. The ending is a cliffhanger. I can't wait to see where he takes us from here.
June 13, 2021
The second novel in F.X. Holden's Coruscant series, Core Drift is a sci-fi whodunnit that draws you into the complex Coruscant world (actually three worlds) and its cast of AIs, cybernetics and humans. The characters are well-drawn and complex and the story is absorbing - it's a very hard book to put down. I am left hungering for the next in the series!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews