Book Two of the JACOB'S LADDER trilogy.
Sometimes the greatest sin is survival.
The generation ship Jacob's Ladder has barely survived cataclysms from without and within. Now, riding the shock wave of a nova blast toward an uncertain destiny, the damaged ship - the only world its inhabitants have ever known - remains a war zone. Even as Perceval, the new captain, struggled to come to terms with the traumas of her past, the remnants of rebellion aboard the ship still threaten the crew's survival.
Yet as Perceval's relatives Tristen and Benedick play a deadly game of cat and mouse in pursuit of a traitor through a cast ship that is renewing itself in strange and dangerous ways, an even more insidious threat is building in a place no one ever thought to look. And this implacable enemy could change the face of the ship forever if a ragtag band of heroes cannot stop it.
Originally published in 2010 as CHILL.
A remarkable SF writer who's leaving many of her contemporaries in the dust - SFReviews
This deftly told story . . . is poised on a knifes edge. Bear's talent for portraying cultural divergence and conflict is especially apparent in this intense wrap-up - Publishers Weekly
Elizabeth Bear received the Campbell Award as Best New Writer in 2005 and has since won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction, a selection of which was published as The Chains That You Refuse (2006). She has been immensely prolific since her debut. Her first novel, Hammered (2005), which began the Jenny Casey trilogy set in a post-catastrophe North America, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel.