The Aluminum Quest. The Vogages of Gordon's Lamp, #7

On the planet of Kassidor, metals are extremely rare and precious. Those that can only be extracted with even rarer energy are even more precious, and people will do almost anything to possess them in spite of incredible danger. Jorma was lucky to return from the Yakhan with Venna, who was everything Tdeshi was and more. He was lucky to live in the beachfront home left by Ava, the Yingolian sorceress from the Kassikan.
He was luckier still to find a fortune in aluminum stuck in the sole of the sandals Ava had bought him. But a visit from a couple from the war world at YingolNeerie showed him that nothing was as it seems. In this sequel to The Tdeshi Quest, the exiles from Earth face the wrath of the war spawned by contact with the Kassikan. A couple old maps, a receipt for some dusty cargo and a derelict Brazilian starship may be all that stand between Kassidor and extermination by a killer asteroid.
Many secretly struggle for control of that ship, others struggle for control of that asteroid while the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. This is a sprawling epic taking us from a quiet peasant farm, thru the bustle of Kassidor Yakhan, thru the remote wilds of the Highlands and into the magical realms of the Angels. Eight souls experience much of the same time line, with each one knowing a little more about the events.
This novel is big enough that it can almost be considered a series in a volume with a separate book for each of the eight. Each one of them has a little more to say about the central theme of this saga, just what it is that unites individuals into a functioning society and what type of society is the next step forward in human evolution. A few are conscious of it, but most of them are just trying to live their lives independent of the larger question.
Most of them learn truths about themselves in the process, with a character who is not one of the eight perhaps learning the most of all. This can be read without reading The Tdeshi Quest, but some scenes never closed in The Tdeshi Quest are made clear in here. Some actors in here are never directly explained, it is up to you to figure out the truth of their roles.