A review by siena_j_p
Alien: Into Charybdis by Alex White

challenging dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book absolutely DESTROYED me in the best way possible. It was filled with twists and turns, kept me on the edge of my seat, and ended with the sense of dawning horror that is, in my opinion, both the hardest to do well but also the absolute best part of horror as a genre. Initially, we begin with two narrators, Shy Hunt and Kamran Afghanzadeh. Shy works for an American tech company hired by Hasanova Data Solutions, an Iranian company which has built a colony on a planet over a mysterious pit known as Charybdis (dude, these people had it coming living somewhere named Charybdis. Learn your mythology). Kamran works for Hasanova, and after a workplace accident his command structure is thrown into chaos as he’s expected to take on a new set of responsibilities, including managing Shy’s team. However, things go horribly wrong, leading a member of Shy’s team to send a distress signal to the American military. Because you know. That always goes so well. It’s at about this point that the point of view begins to fragment, bringing in perspectives from members of the marine team that arrives, the Iranian civilians, and some assorted others. And everything generally begins to spiral out of control. Now, I struggled a bit to get into this at first, probably because this is only one part of a slightly convoluted extension of the Alien/Predator/Prometheus film universe and this happens to be the point that I picked up at but I honestly have no idea if it was the right place to start? But the good news is, there were definitely references I didn’t pick up on but I was still very much able to enjoy the overall plot and points of the story. Because of the nature of the genre (very much action/horror, in the vein of the original Alien), I didn’t necessarily connect to the characters either, but again, that isn’t really the point of the genre. It was more an exploration of accountability, nationalism, and pride as seen in a situation that tears people apart in part because of their own actions. In a word, it was brilliant. The ending filled me with rage but because of the horror and depressingness of it, not because of how it was written. If I was missing one thing it was probably further exploration of the synthetics – it was touched on a lot but never fully developed. I suspect other books in this series deal with it more, but there were really specific relationships that I really would have liked to see more of. I also want to make a quick observation – this book is very conscious of most cultural elements it dealt with, so it was really frustrating to see it lean into the evil East Asian scientist trope. Without getting too spoilery, there’s one Japanese character who works with the marines, is power-hungry, and a huge coward. I think this character might have been previously introduced in a different piece of the universe? But nonetheless, this trope is really tired and frustrating, and I don’t even see the value that this character added to the story. He could be cut out and it would hardly make a difference. So that was probably my biggest issue with this book. Other than that slip of judgment, though, this was a very very good critique of militarization, colonialism, and patriotism.