Friday 13 June 2014

Review - The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher


Title: The Burning Dark
Author: Adam Christopher
Pages: 336
Publisher: Tor Books
Release date: 25th March 2014

Blurb from Goodreads:

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.
But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.

Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?






My Review:

*I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and Adam Christopher*


2.5/5 stars

Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland once saved a planet but now he's retired and his last duty is to oversee the demolition of U-Star Coast City, a space station, that resides in the strange purple light of a star called Shadow. Bored, Ida listens to the radio, to frequencies that are forbidden for a good reason...


It took me a while to get into this book and I have to say that I'm slightly disappointed.
While there were parts that I liked, for example the whole Spider idea (metal spiders that live in space and destroy planets) and the creepy vibe, I wasn't gripped and felt that some things weren't explained as much as they could be - like what are psi-marines and what can they do? Figures on how badly the war with the Spiders was going would have been good as well. Also the ending seemed to be over quite quickly and I didn't really connect with the characters very well.

Overall this book had interesting themes but was disappointing.
 

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