Skip to main content

Blindspace (SF) - Jeremy Szal ****

This sequel to Jeremy Szal's Stormblood builds on the original novel's strength in providing page-turning battle sequences as Szal's self-tortured main character Vakov Fukasawa tries to deal with the way that his stormtech - alien DNA he has been injected with - is transforming his body and interfering with his mind.

I'm not usually a fan of either heavy military SF or books the thickness of a brick, but it says something for Szal's pacing that the pages fly by. This could have been just another law and order versus drug dealers plot, but by bringing in a cult that worships the apparently long-gone evil alien race whose DNA is in the stormtech as a route to a transhuman future, plus various groups with a grudge against the not-exactly-squeaky clean law enforcement grouping, we get a much richer mix of problems for the main characters to face. As before, Szal also provides a great setting in the hollowed-out asteroid Compass, with everything from sub-Blade Runner nastiness to vast ship docks and smart resorts and bars.

The flaws of the original novel remain, though they feel a little less significant. The few backstory chapters remain padding, and there is still too much agonising over the nature of stormtech and what it is doing to the main character. Szal seems obsessed with botanicals in gin - they get far too many mentions. Perhaps the biggest flaw, which I didn't notice so much in the first novel, was the ambiguity in the nature of the armour the characters wear in battle. We keep hearing how hi-tech and ultra strong it is, with loving descriptions of it fitting in place and functioning... and then an alien bites through someone's armour. Really?

However, any attempt to be analytical about a book like this is too much like breaking (ultra-strong, carbon steel) butterflies on the wheel. It is the science fiction novel equivalent of a Tom Cruise movie. Far better to just go with the flow and enjoy the action, of which there is plenty, rather than expect too much logic. Szal is quite happy to put major characters at real risk of being killed off, which always adds to the excitement of the ride. I'm looking forward to the next instalment (even if I wish this wasn't forced on the reader by the ending).

Paperback:   
Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...