CONVERSATIONS WITH AI: Grok reviews “Rhodium Pirates”

MY PROMPT: write a comprehensive review of “Rhodium Pirates” by Omar Fink

# Review: *Rhodium Pirates* by Omar Fink

Omar Fink, *Rhodium Pirates* (KILO Book 1). Independently published, 2021. Dedicated to Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury.

*Star of Epiphany* asked whether a species could leave a planet. *Rhodium Pirates* asks what that species becomes once half of it has left and the other half has stayed. The comet is gone. The elevators are nationalized. The belt is rich in ice and platinum-group metals. People still steal. The first crime in the book is not a space battle. It is a fake mayday.

That is the right opening. The rest of the novel is trying, not always successfully, to be three books at once: a frontier crime story, a systems novel about abundance, and a treatise on machine ethics. The crime story is the one that moves. The treatise is the one that will matter if the series holds.

## What the book is

A prologue restates the post-evacuation map. Habitat wheels of many sizes ride elliptical orbits through the main belt. Cities captured rocks, mined ice and metal, built a sister ring, and sent it inward for the next load of people. Gravity is a stack of floors. Earth-normal at the rim; a third of a gee is about…