Shattermoon, by Dominic Dulley

Now, this is space opera like mum used to write. The wit, exuberance and moral laxity of the Stainless Steel Rat; the scale, variety, consistent physics and civilisation-threatening perils of Alastair Reynolds. Golden Age sf updated for the modern reader. The opening chapter could have been the setting for one of Slippery Jim diGriz’s little ventures: the (female) hero is at a high society ball on a Ruritanian galactic empire type planet, planning a heist along with her dad and brother. It goes at first distractingly, then horribly wrong, and by the end of the book she is preventing a xenocidal war between species. She got there by a non-stop stream of events which, in a lesser book, would have dried up long ago as the author decided okay, she’s had enough. Not here.

And it has a well worked out, logical, consistent ftl system whose constraints can be worked into the plot, as any good space opera should. The first thing to do before executing a jump is to go through the pre-jump checklist. How can you not like that touch?