In Hill's SF novel, a princess accompanies a military shuttle that's searching for
the lost planet Earth in the 41st century.

In the year 4007, the imperial battleship William Lloyd Garrison receives orders
to transport the princess, Fujiyama Hunt, who's been identifying stars that could
be the Earth's sun, to find the planet Earth and download its history so the emperor of the
Chrysanthemum Empire may learn to better govern the human race, which is now
scattered across the galaxy. As the crew traverse the galaxy, they encounter various
political philosophies and societies and face threats including slavers and the dreaded
K-encephalitis, a virus that attacks the brain and renders sufferers unable to act without direction.
Commander Jason Gaytes, a war hero and the ship's external affairs officer, is one of the many
point-of-view characters. Jason is loyal to the throne, which he proved early in his career
by quelling a rebellion instigated by his own wealthy family. He and Princess Fuji
quickly form an attraction upon her arrival, but their relationship is an extremely slow burn.
Despite the novel taking place almost 2,000 years in the future, humanity is relatively
unchanged-the prologue states that despite technological and medical advances,
"the worst problem facing the human race remained what it had always been: themselves."
The narrative's shifts in perspective effectively build tension; for example, the POV of one
captured character leaves readers equally unaware of any rescue efforts in the offing. The United
States is valorized throughout the novel, upheld as the pinnacle of civilization, despite
the fact that the empire is a monarchy. While the cast is ethnically diverse, the novel
includes some strange racial politics, especially the exoticization of Japanese women.
Characters face the constant threat of sexual assault, but in other ways, the novel is
refreshingly sexually liberated. The story is compelling, but some readers may be
thrown by the tonal inconsistencies.

An engaging but uneven space opera.