This was a really great story which I started reading, not knowing if I was going to finish it. It's the start of a series so what kept me going was wondering if the last volume would be titled 'Triple Bypass Gemini'?
It begins with the usual trope for this kind of story, and I'm no fan of trope unless it's really well done and preferably has a twist to it. In this case, it's the standard sci-fi trope: a human (in this case named Lex) who has fallen from whatever grace it was to which he was party (in this case race driving), and who is now eking-out an existence trying to make ends meet and running into serious debt - although what these debts are and how they were incurred is vague and rather glossed over.
After that, things pick up. Lex gets some easy money by ferrying a gangster across town in a rather illegal way so that he manages to catch an important off-planet flight. This pays off some debt, but shortly after that, Lex is kicked out of his apartment (hey, I said it was serious - he wasn't able to pay off all his debts!), but he gets a courier commission (his main job, limo-driving, is a side line) to deliver some documents to another world. Normally everything is sent via Vector Corp, the king of space transportation and deliveries, but the sender doesn't want these documents in Vector's hands - although how Vector would know which package the documents were in is left unexplained.
The fee would pay off everything and leave Lex sitting pretty so he accepts, but soon finds that he's being pursued by a tenacious and vicious agent of Vector. Lex crashes on a planet surrounded by a cloud of meteors and space junk - apparently it's an interplanetary landfill, which makes no sense when you think about it, but there are certain things you have to simply let go in these sci-fi stories if you want to enjoy them, otherwise they just drive you nuts.
Conveniently for Lex, this planet is owned by Karter, who is a reclusive and talented inventor, and a highly-skilled mechanic and engineer. He agrees to fix up Lex's ship (and upgrade it) in return for Lex's eye being cast over some of his inventions. He also loans Lex a ship so that Lex can make his delivery on time while Karter fixes his own ship. But this just leads to more trouble for Lex. Indirectly he learns of a massive plan by Vector corp to garner for itself a complete monopoly over all transportation in the galaxy (again, absurd, but it's sci-fi). Can Lex stop them, and why should he anyway?
I fell in love with the computer (nicknamed Ma) on Karter's world. She was completely adorable. Lex wasn't too bad of a character at all, and Karter is completely insane (and proud of it - he has a certificate to prove it). In fact, Lex is a bit like a mix of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, with Karter as Obi-Wan, and the computer as Princess Leia!
The sci-fi was believable (for the most part!) and well-done in that the author wisely made it look like this stuff would work, but carefully avoided going into what might have been boring and ultimately ridiculous explanations as to why something works or is the way it is - explanations which would have tripped him up, and made him look dumb! In short, it was really well done (for the most part!), and a nice job. This is my kind of sci-fi. There wasn't even a sappy and highly improbable love story either, which was a huge bonus in my book. Unless you count Lex's love affair with the computer, to which I also plead guilty.
I recommend this novel and leave you with a choice quote from the start of Chapter 21, which Lex observes of Karter: "...seeing him with a smile on his face was like seeing a chimp with a butcher knife: very unusual and seldom a good thing."
