To give a spoiler-free pitch, the basic idea is the protagonist coming out of suspended animation on a deep space colony ship where things have gone badly wrong. He wakes up, without even his memory, and is immediately set upon.
I’ll try and keep the rest light on explicit spoilers, but… you know.
The story is dark from the off. Damn near everything that could go wrong, already has gone wrong, and we’re only finding out about it as the protagonist does. As the story progresses, we learn more about both the character himself and the mission.
A mission which I find to be a very plausible scenario for this type of sci-fi story. You can easily see it happening, without too many narrative leaps of faith or unneeded technological McGuffins. Well, beyond the long-distance space travel and suspended animation that are strictly necessary for the story. It’s very “plausible near future tech”. Everything as it’s described is a functional environment, and you can see how things should have gone, and it gives me a real “rugged mechanical environment” vibe.
There is a strong theme of the risks of automation, and how a person fits into an automated system. Especially when that system goes wrong.
I really respect the choice in a sci-fi story to have a character who is out of his depth without being stupid. He’s a deeply practical man, who approaches things with his own set of distinctly non-sci-fi skills and a logical approach. Which I find meshes well with that theme of automation.
If I’m being critical (which I suppose is the point), it took me a little while, maybe a short chapter or two, to get into, and there was the occasional repetitive word choice from time to time which threw me off a little bit.
However, once I was into it, the story drew me in. I like the character, I like the sense of desperation to his attempts to survive and find out just what’s going on.
I put aside a quote from the text that really resonated with me for some reason.
“The days went by and each one was fine, and the fine was the problem, the flat sufficiency of a life that functioned without asking anything of him beyond showing up.”
I don’t know, maybe that says something about me, but I felt that one.
Anyhow, I feel like the choice of where and how to bring the story to a close for the second book makes good sense and leaves me curious.
So, would I recommend this? If “dark, mostly grounded sci-fi” appeals to you, then very much yes. Will I be getting the second one? Also, yes. So, consider that an endorsement.