If your summer reading tastes run to science fiction, you might consider Iain M. Banks’ space opera, MATTER. Much of the action takes place on Sursamen, a Shellworld which is an alien artifact as large as a planet. Level Eight is warring with Level Nine. The two groups have roughly 19th Century technology. Monitoring the action are a series of super alien races: the Oct, the Nariscene, and the Morthanveld who have been around for millions of years and have godlike powers.

Against this backdrop of Galactic power politics, Djan Seriy Anaplian, a secret agent for the human Culture’s Special Circumstances section, discovers her father, the King, has been murdered during the war on Sursamen. Djan decides she needs to go back to her home and investigate.

Banks takes about 200 pages to get all his plotlines up and running. But once they’re in place, the action is swift and deadly. Given that MATTER is 608 pages long, the pages turn with rapidity. The last 100 pages zoom by at warp speed. I hope there’s a sequel.