LOKI'S RING, latest from the deep wells of Stina Leicht

LOKI'S RING
STINA LEICHT
Saga Press
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Gita Chithra embarks on a mission through space to save the robot she loves as a daughter—or risk losing her in the depths of Loki’s Ring—in this intergalactic space adventure from beloved author Stina Leicht.
Gita Chithra, the captain of the intergalactic ship The Tempest , is used to leading her crew on simple retrieval and assistance missions. But when she receives a frantic distress call from Ri, the AI she trained from inception—making her like a daughter to Gita—she knows she’s in for something much more dangerous.
Ri is trapped in the depths of Loki’s Ring, an artificial alien-made solar system, and says everyone in the vicinity has been infected and killed by a mysterious contagion. Gita and her team investigate, only to discover horrors at every turn, and are soon stranded themselves, leaving them vulnerable to infection and attack.
Forced to call on an old friend to help them out of this mess, Gita must succeed or risk losing everyone she’s ever loved.
I RECEIVED THIS DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: This story, set in the same story-verse as PERSEPHONE STATION, is propulsive, exciting, and deeply cool.
What you need to know, going in, is that Author Stina is of the present moment. This means that there are female and non-binary leads, there are straight, gay, polyamorous relationship configurations, there are artificial people called AGIs and not one thing is ever made about any of it.

As it should be. Unless the relationship is the point of the plot, or subplot, these are the details that enrich the story. That's all. I'm delighted with this. I'm excited that Author Stina is telling an old fashioned adventure and chase story with some first-contact elements and a healthy side of anti-capitalist messaging with all these characters following their varying bliss paths... and it's published by a major house with a real marketing push behind it. The happy, it will not stop.
Except there's more: this story is set in the already rich and enticing story-verse that my doted-on PERSEPHONE STATION was set in! (Go read my almost-5* review of that one.)
I know a perfect rating is always the hope of every reader, but the multiple viewpoints used in the story kept me from feeling quite as connected to the characters as a perfect rating would require. This technique is totally demanded by this particular story, but the desire to get to know just that little bit more about the AGIs, for example, left the tiniest niggle of "more, please" in this reader.