Hell Divers (Hell Divers 1) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Stars: 2.5 out of 5

If you like fast-paced military scifi, then this book is right up  your alley. The action is non-stop and the stakes are high. Don’t get attached to characters, because not many will survive this literal hellscape. If the action is enough to entertain you, and you are willing to overlook some glaring plot issues, then you will love this book. And again, if you are here for the action, and don’t particularly care about good characterization, this is definitely your book.

Unfortunately, there are limits as to how much I am willing to suspend my disbelief. And the glaring plotholes in this book are bigger than the craters in Hades, sorry, Chicago. The war was 200 years ago. Since then Earth has been a radioactive husk blasted by giant electric storms. Are you telling me that any machinery or supplies survived that long in such a hostile environment and are still usable? They would be corroded beyond repair. At one point, the hell divers come across an electric lock panel… that still has juice… after spending two hundred years in a nuclear wasteland swiped by electric storms.

The whole societal structure inside the ship makes no sense either. You are telling me that the entire population of the Hive is 560-some people. You should have all hands on deck, working around the clock to keep the derelict ship functioning. You should have excellent education for everyone and cross-training, so that each person can perform several different functions inside the ship as needed. What do we have instead? A stratified society where the upper decks get all the perks, education, food, etc. and the lower decks are basically uneducated cattle. In what apocalyptic world does that make sense? Especially since it’s pointed out several times that the Hive and Ares are the last two ships afloat. Meaning, that’s it for humanity on Earth.

This brings me to the second complaint I have – the unnecessary plotlines. That whole insurrection storyline served absolutely no purpose. It accomplished nothing but take page time from other storylines. It also makes no sense. As I mentioned, there are only 560 people on board this ship. All of them should be needed to keep this thing afloat. So it is essential that everyone knows what’s going on so that problems can be addressed and troubleshooted. Instead, the captain and the upper decks upper class choose not to tell anyone that their ship is basically sinking and they might have days left to live unless hell divers pull out a miracle. This societal structure crumbles into dust with the barest amount of scrutiny. This ship wouldn’t have survived a year after the catastrophe, yet alone 200.

Finally, don’t get into this book if you are looking for believable characters, or even characters with more depth than skin surface. There aren’t any. Again, this is about on part for the military scifi genre, where most of the characters are just names on a page and inevitable cannon fodder.  This is also why I don’t usually read that genre. I like my protagonists with slightly more substance than a carboard cutout. But this is partly my fault. I misread the genre when I picked up this book. I thought it was a post-apocalyptical story, not a military scifi.

I will still probably check out the second book in the series, just because I already own it, but I doubt I will go past that.

Grimspace (Sirantha Jax 1) by Ann Aguirre

Stars: 3 out of 5

This was a decent first book in a new series that kept me interested enough to read it in a couple days. I hadn’t realized that it was also a romance however, so that skewed my perception a little, because the older I get, the more cynical I get and the less tolerance for romantic tropes I have.

Our protagonist is likeable enough, and I truly feel for her. The trauma she went through, not to mention mental and psychological torture, as no joke. No wonder she is a hot mess for most of this book, unsure of what really happened on her last flight, wracked with guilt because everyone died and she survived. In fact, I would have loved for the author to explore this aspect a bit more in the book. As it is, the other characters kind of shrug it off. Yes, it’s horrible, now get over it and take us places. That was rather irritating.

Speaking of other characters, none of the other members of the Folly’s crew are developed sufficiently for me to care about them. In fact, they feel more like placeholders than real people. The butch mechanic with a foul mouth but secretly a heart of gold. The pacifist doctor who cares more about his experiments than people. The strange alien boy that suddenly imprints on our protagonist, etc. 

In fact, that last character was woefully underutilized. There could have been such a good story there. We could have explored their relationship, and how Jax would have had to cope with having someone dependent on her for his survival. As it stands, this storyline is downplayed, and the character is promptly disposed of, so we don’t get to witness character growth for either of them.

That was my other issue with this book. There are a lot of plotlines that were introduced… and them simply dropped after a few pages without rhyme or reason. Like the whole story with Baby-Z. Again, this was a storyline that was woefully underutilized. It could have served as a bridge of sorts between Marsh and Jax, having them care about an alien baby they inadvertently hatched. It would have made their developing relationship more organic. Instead – baby is gone and forgotten a few chapters later.

You could argue that those sudden deaths are there to reinforce Jax’s belief that she is toxic and that she destroys everything and everyone she touches, but that is the simple way out. 

That’s the biggest problem for me – this book seems to always take the path of least resistance when it comes to resolving its storylines, whether it’s the relationship between Jax and Marsh, or her guilt about the crash and death of her previous pilot and lover, or the situation with baby-Z. 

And let’s not even mention the ending of this book, because it’s laughable in its simplicity and wishful thinking. I’m sorry, but a megacorporation won’t fall apart just because of an unsubstantiated broadcast. Not when it has a monopoly on fast space travel. Yes, it’s a giant PR blunder, but that’s what the Corp has a PR Department for. Oh, and call me a cynic, but Jax and her friends wouldn’t have walked out of that building alive, or if they did, they wouldn’t have remained so for long.

All in all though, this book interested me enough to check out the rest of the series, mostly because the glimpses I got of the world are interesting and I want to learn more about Grimspace and why certain people can navigate it. And I also managed to cross another book off my TBR list.