heebiejeepie

The story has the basic structure of a Western: bad guys come to town and the one man who can stop them hesitates until they start killing and also messing with his woman. It takes place on a human-colonized planet named Ferro (lots of iron oxide in the soils - like Mars) x thousands of ly from Earth, kept self-consciously simple by the inhabitants, but still accessible by ongoing interstellar commerce. Our hero is a surgically-modified military commander returned from a war far in the future, and the bad guys are lower-grade thugs bred for the war's purposes, and now out looking for the trouble they were designed for, and a good time. The interplay of Daniels' excellent storytelling juxtaposing extremely sophisticated temporal/quantum-level senses either installed or genetically bred into various beings, with the simple 'trouble in my hometown' basic story line is pure catnip. You're involved both viscerally and intellectually.