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zimb0's review against another edition
4.0
Solid first entry in what I expect to be a sprawling series. Entertaining and fast read, if not slightly disjointed at places But overall scratches an itch for a genre oft not written in.
davecapp's review against another edition
5.0
This is a classic speculative sci-fi novel. Christopher deftly develops a sense of dread and claustrophobia in the reader while continually digging deeper into the secrets behind the ship and its crew. Add to that a good base of military sci-fi, a seemingly overwhelming alien tech, mix it together with solid character development and the result is the beginning of another quality trilogy.
thymrman's review
2.0
Sci-Fi horror books always interest me, it gives the perfect backdrop for a good solid horror to stalk the cast and good excuses for why they can’t just call the cops. And this one had me going for the entire thing, well that is till it didn’t. At some point it all just started to fall apart for me, something that felt rather carefully crafted in the beginning seemed like it just fell apart at the end. Explanations about what was happening didn’t click for me and didn’t feel satisfying. I don’t know if it was a matter of trying to finish the book quickly, or he just didn’t know what to do with the ending. But what we got didn’t satisfy me at all despite how good it all started.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to read the next read the next two books in the series. While wasn’t terrible, the ending just made me lose all interest in the rest of the series. I don’t really care enough about the deeper lore and such behind any of the enemies they have introduced. Definitely not enough to read the next books in the series.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to read the next read the next two books in the series. While wasn’t terrible, the ending just made me lose all interest in the rest of the series. I don’t really care enough about the deeper lore and such behind any of the enemies they have introduced. Definitely not enough to read the next books in the series.
lyrrael's review
4.0
Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date. But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard. Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?
YOU GUYS! YOU GUYS YOU GUYS OMG. I picked this up, seriously, babbling to my husband about how this looked like it was going to be exactly what I wanted as far as a Mass Effect-ey style space opera. I mean, it had everything -- monstrous, spider-like robots that EAT PLANETS and a plucky captain who fights them. Right? Right? NOPE. This turned into one of the creepier horror novels I’ve ever read. This was totally Event Horizon. Or Sunshine -- the movie, not the McKinley novel. IT WAS SO GOOD. I can kind of see why it has such a low rating on Goodreads just because I had no idea it was a horror novel, but dude! WIN.
YOU GUYS! YOU GUYS YOU GUYS OMG. I picked this up, seriously, babbling to my husband about how this looked like it was going to be exactly what I wanted as far as a Mass Effect-ey style space opera. I mean, it had everything -- monstrous, spider-like robots that EAT PLANETS and a plucky captain who fights them. Right? Right? NOPE. This turned into one of the creepier horror novels I’ve ever read. This was totally Event Horizon. Or Sunshine -- the movie, not the McKinley novel. IT WAS SO GOOD. I can kind of see why it has such a low rating on Goodreads just because I had no idea it was a horror novel, but dude! WIN.
mferrante83's review
4.0
Before reading this review you should all understand that one of my favorite movies is Event Horizon. For those who aren’t familiar, Event Horizon, is essentially a haunted house story set in space wherein an intrepid group of spacers investigate the titular ship, the Event Horizon, which years ago mysteriously disappeared during the test of the first FTL drive. Event Horizon isn’t a great movie but much like Alien it combines science fiction and horror in a fun and entertaining manner (see also: Pandorum, Eden Log, and Europa Report). As such the blending of science fiction and horror has always been one of my favorite areas of genre fiction (I do less well with video games, I’m looking at you Dead Space). I say all this to warn you that my look at Adam Christopher’s The Burning Dark is not going to be through a completely objective lens.
The Burning Dark opens with a fairly enigmatic prologue. It is vague but hints at someone or something trapped outside the bounds of our universe trapped but still brimming with malevolent intellect. The prologue definitely sets the tone for the novel and clearly shows, right out the gate, that nothing is quite as it seems. From there readers are introduced to the heroic actions of one Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland as he desperately uses every trick in the book to save a planet from a horrific invasion by an armada of marauding spider-like machine aliens. It is strange then that no long after this battle the seemingly heroic Captain Cleveland finds himself into a forced retirement and sent to oversee the backwater U-star (a space station), Coast City, monitoring the strange star system known as Shadow. Mostly empty, Cleveland finds himself shuffled off into an unused section of the station and left to his own devices while the crew completes its shutdown. Bored, Cleveland constructs a space radio out of spare parts (a hobby he had in his youth) and it isn’t long before he is receiving a strange signal on a subspace band that he isn’t legally supposed to be listening on. Meanwhile, the strange light of Shadow seems to wreak havoc on the sensors and powers Coast City’s systems and its crew while strange whispers and mysterious sight begin to increasingly haunt the station.
There is element of predictability to the The Burning Dark that is sort of endemic to the haunted house theme: lights flicker, people disappear, and strange voices are heard. As a reader familiar with horror you sort of know how things will go and many of the elements that Christopher introduces are a bit obvious. I can’t fault an author working in an established medium for using familiar tropes and Christopher manages to infuse those tropes with a unique style and flavor that definitely makes them stand out. I particularly enjoyed Christopher’s use of real-world Cold War era conspiracy theory by playing upon, and extrapolating a lot more detail from the supposed (real-life) recording made by Judica-Cordiglia brothers in 1961 of a (supposed) Russian cosmonaut. Christopher futher works elements of Japanese folklore into his story thus managing to create a fascinating pastiche of the historical, the supernatural, the scientific and the horrific.
While The Burning Dark is a self-contained story Christopher does a commendable job of placing the story within a larger universe. While, primarily focused on the trials and tribulations of the characters aboard the Coast City the events described in the novel are tied to events outside of Shadow in a rather clever manner. Indeed, the universe of The Burning Dark is an interesting one and one that would be great to be explored in a more traditional space opera. Christopher doesn’t give a lot of background information on the world of The Burning Dark. He lets you extrapolate from name alone just what a psi-marine is without ever fully detailing the nature of a psi-marine’s training. This is both a blessing and a curse as it lets the plot and story flow smoothing while at the same time slightly frustrating readers (like myself) interested in the nitty gritty details so often seen in militaristic space operas. While The Burning Dark is at its heart a ghost story there is a great deal going on in the background that lends a little bit of extra heft to the main story.
I found The Burning Dark an enjoyable read that hit all the right notes to entertain a reader whole enjoys both science fiction and horror; this is a fun story that reads quickly. The Burning Dark leans hard on the fiction half of science fiction so fans of hard science fiction might be a bit less enamored than I was. Similarly the derivative bits of the horror story might put off readers heavily enmeshed in the world of horror fiction. The Burning Dark tries deftly to navigate the thin line between both horror and science fiction succeeding in some regards and failing in others. Thankfully, The Burning Dark marks the opening of a new series (The Spider Wars) and introduces a wealth of interesting ideas that I keen to see explored further. The Burning Dark is a real genre bender with a supernova bright cinematic flair that is worth checking out.
The Burning Dark opens with a fairly enigmatic prologue. It is vague but hints at someone or something trapped outside the bounds of our universe trapped but still brimming with malevolent intellect. The prologue definitely sets the tone for the novel and clearly shows, right out the gate, that nothing is quite as it seems. From there readers are introduced to the heroic actions of one Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland as he desperately uses every trick in the book to save a planet from a horrific invasion by an armada of marauding spider-like machine aliens. It is strange then that no long after this battle the seemingly heroic Captain Cleveland finds himself into a forced retirement and sent to oversee the backwater U-star (a space station), Coast City, monitoring the strange star system known as Shadow. Mostly empty, Cleveland finds himself shuffled off into an unused section of the station and left to his own devices while the crew completes its shutdown. Bored, Cleveland constructs a space radio out of spare parts (a hobby he had in his youth) and it isn’t long before he is receiving a strange signal on a subspace band that he isn’t legally supposed to be listening on. Meanwhile, the strange light of Shadow seems to wreak havoc on the sensors and powers Coast City’s systems and its crew while strange whispers and mysterious sight begin to increasingly haunt the station.
There is element of predictability to the The Burning Dark that is sort of endemic to the haunted house theme: lights flicker, people disappear, and strange voices are heard. As a reader familiar with horror you sort of know how things will go and many of the elements that Christopher introduces are a bit obvious. I can’t fault an author working in an established medium for using familiar tropes and Christopher manages to infuse those tropes with a unique style and flavor that definitely makes them stand out. I particularly enjoyed Christopher’s use of real-world Cold War era conspiracy theory by playing upon, and extrapolating a lot more detail from the supposed (real-life) recording made by Judica-Cordiglia brothers in 1961 of a (supposed) Russian cosmonaut. Christopher futher works elements of Japanese folklore into his story thus managing to create a fascinating pastiche of the historical, the supernatural, the scientific and the horrific.
While The Burning Dark is a self-contained story Christopher does a commendable job of placing the story within a larger universe. While, primarily focused on the trials and tribulations of the characters aboard the Coast City the events described in the novel are tied to events outside of Shadow in a rather clever manner. Indeed, the universe of The Burning Dark is an interesting one and one that would be great to be explored in a more traditional space opera. Christopher doesn’t give a lot of background information on the world of The Burning Dark. He lets you extrapolate from name alone just what a psi-marine is without ever fully detailing the nature of a psi-marine’s training. This is both a blessing and a curse as it lets the plot and story flow smoothing while at the same time slightly frustrating readers (like myself) interested in the nitty gritty details so often seen in militaristic space operas. While The Burning Dark is at its heart a ghost story there is a great deal going on in the background that lends a little bit of extra heft to the main story.
I found The Burning Dark an enjoyable read that hit all the right notes to entertain a reader whole enjoys both science fiction and horror; this is a fun story that reads quickly. The Burning Dark leans hard on the fiction half of science fiction so fans of hard science fiction might be a bit less enamored than I was. Similarly the derivative bits of the horror story might put off readers heavily enmeshed in the world of horror fiction. The Burning Dark tries deftly to navigate the thin line between both horror and science fiction succeeding in some regards and failing in others. Thankfully, The Burning Dark marks the opening of a new series (The Spider Wars) and introduces a wealth of interesting ideas that I keen to see explored further. The Burning Dark is a real genre bender with a supernova bright cinematic flair that is worth checking out.
_pickle_'s review against another edition
3.0
Started quite average, became more enjoyable, only to relapse into something disappointing as it hurtled towards a rather sudden end.
There are a few enjoyable pieces but at the same time there's a lack of style in how those pieces are woven together.
It's really not a bad book! Just one that could be better.
There are a few enjoyable pieces but at the same time there's a lack of style in how those pieces are woven together.
It's really not a bad book! Just one that could be better.
pikamonster's review against another edition
I could tell where this book was going and that it was going to be a drag from the second the perspective changed to the main character. After scrolling through the reviews I'm going to trust my gut and read something else.
sorrenbriarwood's review
1.0
The Burning Dark was an uphill battle, to say the least; I confess I’m surprised I finished it.
Every little twist was so clearly signposted, you could see it from… well, from space, which was perhaps its biggest sin, and undercut any tension Christoper was trying to build. This wasn't helped at all by the problem of repetitive prose. Beyond the predictability, the characters felt largely flat and tropey, and it was difficult to get invested in them as a result. Despite coming in at 336 pages and making a “valiant,” attempt to include female characters (in the form of the not-like-other-girls action-chick, and…) I’m pretty confident that it somehow fails to pass the Bechdel test. It's also, regrettably, one of those books where at times, it seems like the characters are acting stupidly and overlooking the obvious. This is explained away with in-universe reasons, but it makes for a deeply frustrating reading experience and definitely felt like an excuse for the characters to continue to act conveniently for the plot, as opposed to in accordance with sense, which was a pretty great way to break immersion.
I’ve found myself with a growing fondness for horror and suspense-oriented fiction set in space, and it’s a niche with a fair amount of competition. To be blunt, I think this particular title is easily outcompeted.
On a final, spoilery note, I appreciate that much modern horror is inspired by
Every little twist was so clearly signposted, you could see it from… well, from space, which was perhaps its biggest sin, and undercut any tension Christoper was trying to build. This wasn't helped at all by the problem of repetitive prose. Beyond the predictability, the characters felt largely flat and tropey, and it was difficult to get invested in them as a result. Despite coming in at 336 pages and making a “valiant,” attempt to include female characters (in the form of the not-like-other-girls action-chick, and…
Spoiler
the villainI’ve found myself with a growing fondness for horror and suspense-oriented fiction set in space, and it’s a niche with a fair amount of competition. To be blunt, I think this particular title is easily outcompeted.
On a final, spoilery note, I appreciate that much modern horror is inspired by
Spoiler
Japanese folklore, but the way that Izanami’s racial features are stressed with regard to her role as the villain just didn’t sit quite right with me. I don’t have Japanese heritage, so I wouldn’t be comfortable making a judgment on this, but especially with the majority of the cast being white, it certainly rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe another Japanese member of the crew would have offset that weirdness?whatdotheyknowaboutfriends's review
1.0
Some good eerie suspense at first (note there are a lot of horror overtones here), but the end breaks down completely. Poorly explained conspiracies are introduced to tie the whole thing together, and the insidious demonic force (a weakly sciencified ghost) is defeated with a disappointingly small amount of pluck and hustle from the main characters.
aretaa's review against another edition
2.0
Oh boy, I really wanted to like this one. The premise sounded like this could be a really cool horror sci-fi book. Sadly, it wasn't, because I didn't really feel the horror. There were a few moments that were building up to something, but then just fell flat for me. Somehow the sci-fi setting felt unnecessary because the world building was really weak. I mean, there are these giant "spiders" that devour whole worlds and then the only thing the author does with them is . And then mixing japanese mythology into it was just weird.