Heaven's Vault review – new worlds, new words

Heaven's Vault, a science fiction adventure told with the appealing restraint of an Asimov classic, begins as something of a reluctant manhunt. Your character, Aliya, an orphan who as a young girl was rescued from a planet of slave traders by an esteemed academic, is summoned home to the university where she grew up. There, her adoptive mother beseeches Aliya to find an old friend who has disappeared while undertaking an archaeological treasure hunt. It's an interruption that Aliya, a freelance archaeologist-cum-treasure hunter herself, could do without. Still, through familial loyalty, or more likely a rivalrous interest in whatever treasure the vanished man was hunting, she glumly agrees to the assignment.