When I first came across this at the bookstore, it immediately interested me - I thought it would be space opera. However, reading the description made me feel that this was military science fiction, which I typically don't enjoy as much. So, I was on the fence, and did not make the purchase.The next time I encountered this book, the comments on the back cover from Neal Asher and Gary Gibson were encouraging. I've read Angel Stations by Gibson and Gridlinked by Asher, and I enjoyed both, so I decided to give this a chance. In the "extras" section, which is pretty common to Orbit books these days, it was also encouraging that Sawyer is an avid fan of the Alien and Predator universes, which was an additional plus. I was looking forward to "a gripping read" that was "action drenched".
The start of the story was familiar - something I've seen before in many books and movies, although the opening action ends somewhat unexpectedly. Once the group learns of their mission, and head into the Maelstrom, there is some more action, and then the pace of the story changes - it becomes much slower. This pace shift made the story more difficult to follow for me, and I found my interest waning. For about half of the book the team is stranded on the planet Helios, with the mysterious Artefact which seems to have so much influence on the enemy Krell, and the pace does not pick up again until the final battle, which, for me, was somewhat reminiscent of the movie Aliens. I don't mean that a "queen Krell" is encountered, but I'm referring to the general pace of the story - the tension gradually builds until the final showdown and escape. But, for some reason, there was not enough interesting stuff to engage me during this slow period, and I found the flashbacks into Harris' past, which ultimately reveal much about him and his interest in what is found on Helios, to be disruptive to the pace of the story.
I was disappointed that the team did not use their "remote avatars" more often - I think this only happened three times in the story. While I don't remember an explanation for how they can remotely control the avatars over vast distances, I did like the explanation of the mental and physical toll that it takes on their operators - after all, each body is effectively a disposable tool which is, more often than not, killed during an operation. Also, when the avatar is killed the operators really experience it - being ripped apart by the enemy Krell, limb by limb, or dying in the vacuum of space. When the operator transitions back to their real body, they even suffer physical effects to their body for a period, in addition to the mental anguish of the ordeal. I also enjoyed the position that Captain Harris is put in near the end of the story - it is unique to his personal struggle in the story, and impacts him alone and not the rest of his team, and it ties in well with his background which is revealed in the flashbacks. So, from the standpoint of the full story, the flashbacks work and deliver what is necessary to flesh out the story - but for some reason, this particular execution did not work for me.
The Krell are an interesting "hybrid" alien race, kind of a combination of things I've seen elsewhere. They live in the vast, uncharted Maelstrom, which is largely inaccessible to humanity due to lack of star data which would allow identification of Q-points for them to jump to. All of their technology is organic - even their ships are grown, They have a hive-mind. And, for me at least, they are somewhat similar to the creatures from the Alien movies - but not identical. These are all concepts I've seen in other works of science fiction, and it was interesting to see them joined together. I also found the Krell to be interesting due to their apparent duality. They are savage creatures that operate as a hive-mind, with different forms like the creature from Alien, and yet they posses amazing technology. It could be argued that the Klingon race from Star Trek is similar, but I wouldn't agree with that - the Krell seem to have more in common with the savagery of the world of insects than they do with sentient species. But, they must be intelligent, if humanity was able to make a treaty with them. I think it will be interesting to see further exploration of such a race in the next two books.
Regarding the mystery of the Artefact, I'm not sure we really know what it was, or why it was built - I view the ideas postulated by Kellerman to be theory - I don't recall any physical proof of the findings. But it is made clear that a third-party is responsible for its construction, which probably speaks volumes to what may potentially be coming in the future. I didn't think that the effect the Artefact has on the Krell was adequately explored, although there is potential that we may learn more in the last two books of the series.
This book was different enough from what I consider to be mainstream military science fiction that I enjoyed it, although the story stretched out in a few places where it almost wasn't holding my interest. Overall, I feel that this is a successful debut novel, and it was well written, and it does deal with very human issues - addiction, loss, and most importantly that war is hell and its impact on soldiers. I've got a long list of books to read, but I'll probably be checking out book 2 at some point.
