Darker Space

Title: Darker Space
Author: Lisa Henry
Publisher: Loose Id
Release Date: October 13, 2015
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Page Count: 228
Reviewed by: LenaLena
Heat Level: 3 flames out of 5
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
Blurb:

Brady Garrett is back on Earth. He’s living with his partner Cam and they’re raising his sister Lucy together. Life is better than some feral reffo from Kopa has any right to hope, and Brady knows it. He’s even grateful for it, most of the time. He loves Cam, even though he’s afraid that he’s not good enough for him, and he’s still having nightmares about the alien Faceless.

Cameron Rushton loved being a pilot once, and he still feels the pull of the starlight. He’s building a life with Brady now, and with Lucy. Life is good, even if it’s not without its complications. Both Brady and Cam are dealing with the endless cycle of interviews, tests, and questions that the military hierarchy hopes will reveal the secrets of the aliens who could very easily destroy humanity. They have each other though, and together they’re making it work.

But from out in the black, Kai-Ren is still watching and everything Brady and Cam think they’ve won, they stand to lose all over again.

This whole series should have been called ‘Waiting for Kai-Ren’, because that is pretty much all that happens and in both Dark Space* and Darker Space Kai-Ren doesn’t show up until almost the end. Not that he does a whole lot when he gets there, besides saying their names and running his claw down someone’s naked spine. That last thing happens – real or imagined- at least 5 times in this book and there we run into another problem: the book is so damned repetitive. From the repeated descriptions of Kai-Ren’s features, to the repeated statements of the superiority of the officer’s food, and the repeated observations of how much Cam loves ‘the black’, etc. Dark Space had similar issues in the middle. The first 40% of this one are nothing but Brady having the same 4 thoughts over and over again:

I am just a lowly reffo kid
I must take care of Lucy
I got a bad attitude, but really everyone else is just an asshole
I don’t know why Cam would love me

Honestly, I don’t know either. But saintly Cameron Rushton is nothing but very pretty, very kind and endlessly, endlessly understanding (and therefore boring as hell). After 40% there is a little plot (too little, too late, as far as I am concerned) and, of course, there is Kai-Ren’s arrival finally at 80% or so, but it all feels very flimsy. I understand that this is more like a romance (not a whole lot happens in the relationship development between Brady and Cam, though, but it could be that I skimmed over that, like I skimmed most superfluous sex scenes) and not a hard boiled scifi novel, but does it have to be as flimsy as this?

Anyway, it looks like there will be another book after this one and with the ending setup as it is, Henry has created chance to do some serious world building. I hope she takes it, because this scifi-light stuff just doesn’t do it for me.

 

Pretty cover, though.

 

*That link goes to my goodreads review. Here is the link to the original review on this site, but that reviewer thought it was worth 5 stars and I wouldn’t want you to think that that was me.

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