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Blogs by Gabriel Boutros
Here's what I thought of Dark Space, book 2 of the Rogue Hunter series 4/3/2014 12:58:27 PM
I received a free copy of this book for an honest, non-reciprocal review. Dark Space is the second book in the Rogue Hunter series, the story of beautiful but deadly bounty hunter named Zyra Zanr, who first appeared in Inquest. Not having read the first book of the series I was worried that I’d have difficulty following what was happening here, which would make reviewing it, and enjoying it, difficult. But there was no need to worry, as Dark Space works great as a stand-alone. The book uses a minimal amount of exposition and back story to introduce the characters, whose relationships and motivations are revealed as the story unfolds. Within the first few pages I realized there was no need to worry about what I may have missed from the first book, and found myself enjoying this one.
This book begins with a group of bounty hunters who capture Zanr and hold her prisoner aboard their spaceship. It seems that she reneged on the repayment of a huge debt to some sort of galactic loan shark, who has decided to make an example of her and put a bounty on her head. As they’re bringing her back to collect their pay we are shown how the stress of spending months together out in space can get to people, with the ship’s crew constantly fighting and bickering. These characters are quite well-drawn, given good and bad sides, strengths and weaknesses. And, while we get to see their human sides, we soon find out that they are also able to brutally torture their prisoner in order to punish an escape attempt.
Unfortunately for them they have to keep her alive to collect their bounty, because she soon turns the tables on them and begin stalking them on their own ship. Very quickly the story turns into a blood-filled game of cat and mouse between Zyra and the crew. It is very hard to know who the good guys are here, as everybody, including the book’s heroine, displays some real barbarism, which was sometimes jarring, but never boring.
It’s full of great tough guy dialogue spouted by macho characters, including the many women on the ship who are just as tough, if not tougher, than their male counterparts.
Minor rant and spoiler alert:
For some reason the bounty hunters’ ship has a self-destruct mechanism on it. When I read that I wanted to scream: WHY??? Of course this is a great device to create tension and suspense in the story, but there is absolutely no reason for such a thing to even exist. Are there planes flying in the sky right now which have self-destruct sequences? Are there ships on the sea that are ready to sink on a moment’s notice? So why do sci-fi writers think that once ships start travelling in space that a “countdown to self-destruction mechanism” is de rigeur? It’s enough to make me pull my hair.
But not enough to stop me from recommending this fast-paced space actioner that had me turning the pages late into the night.
