This high tech space opera starts with a demonstration that even AIs or artificial intelligences can't get everything right. Bleak Pass is a strategically important computer location and the AI has failed to keep it entirely secure. Then we move to an agent spying on another agent, in the mid-war years of a dull cliff-side town on a failing mining planet. CONTROL is not easy for Ira as he leads a simple life for months while the object of his interest, a woman named Mir Tohno, does nothing out of the ordinary. When she does change her pattern however, the trained killer who watches her finds the tables turned.

These people are rooted in our Earth, as is proven by an AI deciding to don the appearance of Clark Gable. However when the focus of their attention is an orbital weapon strike on a munitions facility, there is not much time for levity.

Much of the narrative involves combat zones, so this story will be best suited to those who love military SF and can't wait to see what happens when orange-flashed black armour meets a red mist from high velocity weapons fire, or a gas giant exerts an inexorable pull on a space traveller without power. The tale becomes complex quickly, and the characters we're following are not always sympathetic, but I note that we still employ mechanics and farmers' daughters, while the powerful floodlights used by farmers to haul in harvests around the clock prove an unwelcome surprise for a sneak attack squad. I liked such set pieces; also the incident when a grenade is flung at a posse of drones in a tunnel carved from bedrock.

There is strong language from early in the exciting story and I decided that author Niall Singers is probably writing for a male reader, most of the female characters being quite as tough as the guys. The computer-minded drones, well let's say they are not amiable towards us hairless apes. The settings of CONTROL:BLEAK PASS cover much ground and space, just right for the space opera buff, provided you can cope with the odd humanitarian nightmare. We need to focus on such vast possible futures from time to time, since this gives us cause to look at life today and ask; if this is how we treat other people, treat our planet, why should anyone else treat it - or us - any better? CONTROL:BLEAK PASS is Niall Singers' first book, and the start of a trilogy.