The novice Luca is chosen by Commisary Dolo to accompany him on a trip to the inner core to investigate reports of anti-doctrinal behaviour amongst the troops of the Green Navy. He travels out to the Asteroid base in question, on the very edge of human controlled space, the frontier between humans and the territory controlled by the alien Xeelee.

Once he arrives on the asteroid he quickly discovers much evidence of behaviour and beliefs at odds with the doctrine of 'the Race must survive, the individual is expendible', even the beginnings of an almost religious belief system. He also finds out more about the lives of the soldiers in the Green Navy and what they have to endure as part of their lives which causes him to doubt everything he knows and believes.

This is some ways is secondary (to Luca) to the woman he meets. At the very start of his assignment he is introduced to Captain Teel, and is instantly infatuated - but as a serving officer in the Navy she and he are on opposite sides of a millenia old struggle between the military and the Commisary for Historical Truth.

This is a new story set in Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence and will please anyone who has read and enjoyed his previous Xeelee sequence stories; but even if you are new to Mr. Baxter's writing it will not be that disadvantageous for you as he skillfully includes enough detail for new readers without padding the text with information repetitious to his core fans.

It does, however, leave someone like myself, who has read a little of the Xeelee sequence, with a strong desire to read more. This is an author whose working is compelling, his reputation amongst the best of British sf most definitely is deserved.

This is a very short book, but the reader is certainly not left feeling lacking full measure, as the author narrative is concise, precise and complete with enough description to allow the reader to fill in the gaps. Also, despite this being a novella set mainly in a military base during an interstellar war, this is not militaristic sf. It is more a tale of a young man growing up and coming to understand a little more of the world.

He reacts to events and situations around him with a wonderfully believeable naïvety, struggling to fit his newly acquired knowledge into his beliefs in his Doctrine, but slowly coming to accept that it will not cover everything. This book lives up to the standards Stephen Baxter seems to have set for his writing.

Synopsis
Eighteen thousand years have passed since the birth of the Third Expansion. Humanity spans the Galaxy ­ and has become locked in a titanic, unending battle with their ultimate foe, the Xeelee.

Luca is a novice at the Commission for Historical Truth. Based on E arth, young Luca is at the heart of the mesh of intelligence that controls and drives the Galaxy-wide war. But now into his life comes Captain Teel ­ a woman as young as he is, enigmatic, compellingly beautiful ­ but also a serving officer from the Front itself.

Luca is immediately captured by an infatuation for Teel. But Luca's duty to the Expansion sends him on an extraordinary journey to the deadly core of the Galaxy, where he must confront the truth of an interstellar war, a war that spans a hundred thousand light years and has endured for millennia.

In the midst of this superhuman conflict ­ even as he 'rides the rock' with Teel into the jaws of the ultimate darkness ­ Luca must strive to protect his own humanity from being crushed by the great events in which he is enmeshed.

This new story is set in Stephen Baxter's acclaimed future history The Xeelee Sequence. A remote sequel to Reality Dust (PS Publishing 2000), Riding the Rock is a story of love, war, and the destiny of mankind.