The passengers on the ship, who call themselves Méridiens (naturally named after their colonized world), arrived at their destination and built their colony with relative ease, and achieved significant technological advances (including FTL communication and travel). Their peaceful civilization is called The Confederation, and is made up of numerous colonies across many light-years of space.
Alex's civilization never reached their desired destination and experienced a sequence of disasters that reduced the colony ships population to less that 2,000 people before they were able to recover and start growing again on their new home world which they called New Terra. They have recovered to the point where they have begun creating an outpost on another planet in their solar system, but have not advanced much further than that. They rely on capturing asteroids for water and resources, to avoid destroying their environment like they did with Earth (which is why the colony ships left in the first place).
Eventually we learn why the Méridiens ship is in such bad shape. They were unexpectedly attacked over 70 years ago by a strange silver ship, which managed to cripple a freighter in minutes, and seriously damage their ship before they were able to use their FTL to escape. The damage to the ship required crew members to enter stasis to be able to survive.
As it turns out, neither group of humans has the ability to deal with the threat of this silver ship. While the Méridiens are technologically advanced, due to the peaceful way of life that technology has not been focused on military offense and defense. The state of the Confederation is unknown, and their ship requires major repairs. The first half of the story is about the rescue of the Méridiens, and the second is about the two groups of humans working together to prepare for future conflict, while getting the Méridiens back home.
Alex Racine is a very interesting character. He is a genius, and he has a good moral compass. He is always interested in helping, and he almost immediately sides with the people he has rescued. Alex's interaction with the Méridiens, and with Julien, is a major part of the story. Each of the major characters grows as their trust in each other increases.
Julien is an excellent artificial intelligence, and he grows just as the other characters do, when he starts taking a liking to Alex and how he thinks. Julien is referred to as a SADE (Self Aware Digital Entity), which is a term I've never heard before.
I also thought that the social structure of the Méridiens was interesting. If I understood it correctly, it is similar to the great houses from Frank Herbert's Dune series - just without the conflict and backstabbing (of course, this is all just learned from dialogue with the Méridiens). Although, their society is not perfect, and there are those who don't agree with certain things. They have an interesting solution to dealing with those that do not follow the orders of their House.
This is a good start to the series. It kept me interested, and I liked the characters, but for some reason I don't consider this an easy read. It's not that the language is complicated, but for some reason I could not read this as quickly as some other books that I have enjoyed. It may have been the level of dialogue in this story. But, this is still highly recommended.
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