What’s this book?? *HELP*

Looking for a sci-fi book that I read awhile ago. I can remember some key plot points, but not the title, author, or any character names. If anyone recognises these plot points, I would love to find the book to be able to read the rest in the universe the book is set in.

I recall a prologue where a human based crew are exploring space and come across a kind of crystalline structure which infects or kills all but one of the crew. The lone crewmember then crash lands on a planet.

It then jumps forward to the main storyline focusing on the inhabitants of this planet, the structure of their civilisation, politics, and how they deal with this crystalline structure. I think there is some political turmoil on the planet, not due to colonisation or any alien verse human disagreement, but a sort of revolution within the native inhabitants during a kind of Industrial Age. This revolution is disrupted by an increasing pressure to deal with fragments of the crystalline structure that have crashed onto the planet, maybe out in plantation fields? The fragments cause a kind of mind control of anyone who touches it. They are kind of sucked into the fragment and spat back out looking the same same but controlled by whatever this thing is (think body snatcher).

I remember something about an expanding area of space that nothing comes out of. There are some garbled radio waves and I think I remember they make an android clone of the inventor of faster than light travel or teleportation? And they send the android into this weird part of space.

The main storyline, if I remember correctly, isn’t focused on the astronaut who loses her crew and crash lands on the planet from the prologue but it circles back to this by the end.

The main story, I think, focuses on the inhabitants of this planet and how they deal with the infectious mind control rock.

Please help ;-;