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Lightless by C. A. Higgins
Jan. 5th, 2016 10:07 pmLightless
3/5. A "research" space vessel is invaded by two "thieves", and the three-person crew is joined by an interrogator from the totalitarian solar system government bent on getting one of the captured prisoners to talk. Meanwhile, the ship computer is slowly coming to consciousness.
I'm being a bit unfair giving this a 3/5. What I'm really doing there is giving myself a bit of room, because this is a debut, and while it's really very good, I'm going on record now and saying that one of C.A. Higgins's later books is going to be a knockout. So I'm rating on that entirely speculative scale. It's a compliment.
This is tense and twisty and claustrophobic. The entire book encompasses the inside of a single spaceship whose every nook and cranny is under surveillance, populated by a cast of fewer than ten characters. Yet the story it tells – alternating between the mental duel of the interrogation and the increasingly desperate efforts of the ship's architect to understand what is happening to it –is also the story of a revolt against totalitarianism playing out in the wider solar system. The word "controlled" comes to mind when trying to describe this book. Maybe "poised." Not words I use for debuts very often.
The tension of this one lingers.
3/5. A "research" space vessel is invaded by two "thieves", and the three-person crew is joined by an interrogator from the totalitarian solar system government bent on getting one of the captured prisoners to talk. Meanwhile, the ship computer is slowly coming to consciousness.
I'm being a bit unfair giving this a 3/5. What I'm really doing there is giving myself a bit of room, because this is a debut, and while it's really very good, I'm going on record now and saying that one of C.A. Higgins's later books is going to be a knockout. So I'm rating on that entirely speculative scale. It's a compliment.
This is tense and twisty and claustrophobic. The entire book encompasses the inside of a single spaceship whose every nook and cranny is under surveillance, populated by a cast of fewer than ten characters. Yet the story it tells – alternating between the mental duel of the interrogation and the increasingly desperate efforts of the ship's architect to understand what is happening to it –is also the story of a revolt against totalitarianism playing out in the wider solar system. The word "controlled" comes to mind when trying to describe this book. Maybe "poised." Not words I use for debuts very often.
The tension of this one lingers.
