SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Dead Space by Kali Wallace: https://t.co/cPUYMlJ8tD
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 18, 2021
Short Review: 7 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): A SF/Cyberpunk/Thriller/Noir hybrid, Dead Space features a former AI engineer forced to do investigative work for a powerful corporation, investigating the mysterious death of a former colleague.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 18, 2021
It's well enough done, but pretty much unexceptional.
2/3
Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 2, 2021 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Dead Space is a SciFi mystery/thriller from author Kali Wallace and a book I knew practically nothing about going in (I'd requested it on Netgalley on a whim). It turns out to be a thriller in the vein of some of the Planetfall novels (most notably After Atlas), featuring an AI expert whose career and body was blown apart by tragedy and forced to become instead an investigator of mostly petty crimes by a overly powerful corporation who owns her debt, as she investigates the mysterious death of a former colleague.
It's a solid setup, and the book doesn't try to go too deep with any themes (unlike the Planetfall novels), but the result is a pretty solid and enjoyable thriller which isn't too long to read. The character work is solid if unexceptional, and the mystery just tantalizing enough to reel you in, that if you're looking for a thriller dealing with all of these elements - AI, Powerful Corporations holding people in debt in space, a murder mystery, etc. - then this will work for you.
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Hester Marley had a plan for her life: to create a state of the art AI called Vanguard to help a project of exploration - the Titan Research Project - expand humanity's horizons. Then a terrorist attack destroyed her ship, Vanguard, and left her for dead, surviving only thanks to costly prosthetics replacing most of her limbs. But her rescuers, working for Parthenope Enterprises, are no do gooders, and until she works off the debt of her medical treatment, she's stuck with them, far from anyone she cares about. And so Hester, an AI expert, finds herself working as station security on the Parthenope asteroid settlement of Hygiea, with no hope left of finding anything else.
At least until Hester receives an unusual communication from another Project survivor, David, who used to specialize in robotics before he too was forced to work for Parthenope on one of their prize stations. But the message David sends her makes no sense, making incorrect references....and then David turns up dead not 24 hours later. Soon she finds herself investigating David's death and searching for what he was trying to tell her - for something is clearly wrong, something that threatens to overturn everything she knows and will require her to call on her old expertise one more time....
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Dead Space is a story that features a number of elements that will seem familiar to genre readers. You have a scifi setting where corporations have significant power, with people forced into debt into working for them - especially for medical debt, etc. You have a classic noir like setup with a communication from a person who turns up dead that doesn't make sense. And you have things like robotics, AI and space travel to add to it all.
Dead Space doesn't use these concepts as some other books do, to take a serious examination of themes relevant to our own world - but it does use them instead to craft a pretty solid and not too long SciFi Mystery. All of the characters are done well, even if none of them really drew me in to the point where I loved them, and a few of them don't play according to the type you'd expect (for example a lawyer from a rich and powerful family sent with the detective team....is totally on their side and not trying to interfere with them).
And its mystery plotline, even where it can be predictable (the final reveal was one I expected to come about in some way or another from early on) is intriguing enough to work, as Hester begins to realize what is truly going on and tries to figure out what to do about it. There really isn't too much to say here - unlike some similar books like After Atlas from the Planetfall series - this book doesn't appear to be making any particular points about our world beyond surface level - corporations and debt slavery are bad, as is medical debt, AI isn't magically better than humanity but can be good and useful if used properly, etc etc. But if you're looking for a dystopian sf noir-esque mystery, it's a very solid choice to pick up.
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