Looking For a Good Book

Jose Carriles is a pilot – one of the best. He’s also got friends in high places, and while he should be enjoying his time sitting behind a desk with nothing to do, instead he is on the Mosaic – a massive ship taking the first-ever journey outside of our own solar system.

On the Lunar Colony of New Destiny, Corin Timony – a former friend of Carriles – should be celebrated as the best spy in the business. Instead, she’s been demoted to menial admin duties. Carriles might be the one to blame for her current status.

Carriles recognizes that he’s only the pilot on this unique vessel, but he begins to sense some things are going wrong. In fact, if not for his quick, out-of-the-box thinking, the entire ship and crew might have been destroyed. When he brings his concerns to his superior, he is quickly put in his place and reminded to leave issues in other departments to those in charge. 

Instead of being reassured, this has the opposite affect. Carriles might otherwise be unconcerned, but as he’s on this ship that was nearly destroyed, he wants to get to the crux of the problem but must now tread carefully.

Back on New Destiny, Timony receives the distress call from Mosaic. But when she discovers that the messages have been erased and there’s no evidence of them ever being received, she knows that Carriles and the Mosaic are in real danger and she needs to do something. The two of them will find themselves deep in conspiracies with the entire human race facing extinction.

I’ve never read anything by either author Rob Hart nor Alex Segura but I’m always up to read an exciting, new scifi story.

The general setup here was mostly nicely done.  We really get to know Carriles quickly and efficiently.  We also get to know the dangerous situation. Timony, on the other hand, is rather an enigma. How she comes into play, and why she comes into play, is harder to decipher. (And I’ll be honest, throughout the book I was thrown – I had trouble remembering that the name ‘Timony’ was female. Most likely because I knew a male with a very similar name.) There’s a backstory to them, but we don’t really get much information on it. It seems rather heavy-handed – you know, they have a back story. It’s important.  But then it isn’t.

Carriles – cool. Easy to identify.  Maybe too much of a stock ‘starship pilot’ character, but the story he’s involved in grabs our interest.  Timony, on the other hand, is supposed to be some great spy, but if we weren’t TOLD this, we’d never know because she doesn’t do any super spying.

Once the details to the mystery started to reveal themselves, I lost interest.  It’s kind of goofy, to be honest. New planet discovered. Oops – the planet maybe has intelligent life.  Mankind threatened.

Overall, the Carriles/Timony relationship doesn’t work.  Their ‘past’ is only important for one brief moment that I can recall, and frankly, two strangers with similar ethics would have responded the same. The story starts out great but devolves into some pretty standard scifi fare – the sort we might have found in the scifi of the 50’s.

Looking for a good book? Dark Space by Rob Hart and Alex Segura is space opera that isn’t particularly new and doesn’t provide any remarkable characters.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Dark Space

authors: Rob Hart & Alex Segura

publisher: Blackstone Publishing, Inc.

ISBN: 9798212218795

hardcover, 304 pages