Revenger

Revenger is a science fiction novel by the Welsh writer Alastair Reynolds, published in 2016. It is unconnected to his earlier books and opens the Revenger trilogy.

The story is set tens of millions of years in the future, among the ruins of empires that rose and fell long before the present one. Adrana and Arafura Ness, known as Fura, are skilled bone readers, and bone reading is the primary means by which ships here communicate with each other. Their ability earns them places as apprentices on Monetta's Mourn under Captain Pol Rackamore, whose crew searches out baubles: small ancient worlds that have been hidden away and surrounded with layers of protection, and that can be cracked open for the relics and barely remembered technologies inside. An attack by the pirate Bosa Sennen breaks the sisters apart during one of those hunts, leaving Fura to work out how to survive in a system where crews, ships and the things they are chasing are all dangerous.

Reynolds had spent the previous decade on the Revelation Space novels; this book starts a new setting in which the technology is ancient and salvaged, the ships are sailed rather than flown, and the fortunes to be made come out of other people's ruins. Two sequels, Shadow Captain and Bone Silence, followed in 2019 and 2020.