While mankind is extinct, the civilization rolls on thanks to the synthetic servants of mankind. They've gone to accomplish some of the dreams of humanity - building cities on Luna, Mars and beyond, an orbital beanstalk on Mars, mining the asteroid belt, beaming power from Mercury and vast STL starships.

The major problem is that the androids that succeeded mankind think and feel and are bound by conditioning and programs. Another is that the governments haven't recognized the situation and consider the androids to still be property - they can only be people (and own themselves) as limited liability corporation. Thus an android can own another android, especially if the second went bankrupt or didn't keep up its filings.

This has lead to massive class differences. A small minority of aristocrats that own (or otherwise control) almost everything and everyone. The slaves that the aristos own and a very small minority of androids that own themselves.

Add in that since mankind has gone extinct fashionable body plans have shifted to the slightly inhuman among the aristos. Oh, they're still humanoid, but either bishojo (think anime with big eyes, small mouths and weird hair colors) or chibi (dwarf with the above features and an oversize head). Those that are indistinguishable from humans (like Freya) are deeply unfashionable.

And that's just the Inner System.

Into this, we have Freya. After an incident with an aristocrat on Venus, she needs to travel and is off on an adventure that takes her to Mercury, then Mars, the moons of Jupiter and the deep outer system.

Along the way, we readers get a cynical view of the political system (if you can diginify it with that name), space travel and its attendant difficulties, espionage and the basics of how thoughtful, empathic androids like her were created (answer: brain simulation, emulation and then modification) and then trained into compliance (you really don't want to know, but I'll say that the 11th birthday of Freya's template matriarch is really important), soul chips and soul dumps.

All in all, its pretty darn good. Like a lot of SF, the setting outshines the character, if only because Freya occasionally comes across a bit whiny. Beware there is at least one stinker of a pun in there.

As a gamer, I am mightily intrigued by the setting and would love to game in it. Roles that appeal are an aristo trying to stay on top of his or her slaves. A PI/surveillance android trying to own himself while caught in the manipulations of the aristos. A revolutionary trying to overthrow the system. A runaway slave turned pirate.