Dark Space

De: Alex Segura, Rob Hart

Narrado por: Nicol Zanzarella, Timothy Andrés Pabon

Bestselling and acclaimed authors Rob Hart and Alex Segura join forces on Dark Space, a sweeping sci-fi spy thriller that blends the epic scope and character-driven spark of Star Trek with the intrigue of John le Carré’s Smiley novels.

If life were fair, ace pilot Jose Carriles should have ended up a desk jockey like his former friend Corin Timony, back on the lunar colony of New Destiny. Instead, he’s the pilot of the Mosaic—a massive ship taking the Interstellar Union’s first-ever mission to outside our solar system.

Timony should have been the best spy at the Bazaar, the lunar colony’s international intelligence arm. Instead, she’s been demoted to admin duties like monitoring long-range communications. She has no one to blame but herself—and maybe Carriles.

But when the Mosaic experiences a series of strange malfunctions and Carriles is forced to take a wild gamble to save the ship, he begins to suspect the reasons behind the exploratory mission weren’t exactly on the up-and-up.

At the same time, Timony’s old instincts kick in as she realizes the distress call she received from the Mosaic has been wiped without a trace.

As people start to end up dead and loyalties are tested, Timony and Carriles find themselves entangled in a star-spanning conspiracy that drags them through the darkest corners of their government—and their own personal failures—and face-to-face with a reckoning that could destroy humanity as we know it.

©2024 Rob Hart and Alex Segura (P)2024 Blackstone Publishing

Worse book in a long time. (first 2 hours)

This is only the second time in my reading career I've given up on a book only 2 hours in, here is my criticism, I'm sure some people will enjoy it but not for fans of real scifi.

This is more of a mystery & conspiracy story with a splash of "who done it" and not really science fiction. The conspiracy happens in a psuedo scifi environment but this is not science fiction, this is a story about people doing people things. The book feels like it was written for teenagers, the ships malfunctions are very obviously sabotage from the start and the reader is just waiting for the characters to catchup but there is no sense of urgency and the main character seems limp and timid almost like a guy at his corporate accounting job with no real authority. The narrator (perhaps directed to do so) has a habit of pronouncing all the spanish names like you would in a spanish speaking country heavily rolling the R's and J becomes H, you know what I mean. This is fairly odd and jaring, there are memes about this kind of speech, I've only ever seen people on TV (usually the news) talk like this and it always comes across cringey. Overall I guess cringey is the best way to describe the entire thing, at least the 2 hours I've listened to so far. Anyways, I'm going back to Expeditionary Force for some good quality scifi! I'll leave this book for the people who enjoy mystery/conspiracy nonsense.

TLDR: book is cringe, 2 hours in and is more of a mystery/conspiracy than a scifi, the book seems more people focused than plot focused. If you enjoy mystery/conspiracy perhaps you will enjoy this more than I did.

Do you like tropes? This book is for you!

Ugh, what a disappointment. Threatening guy in a fedora and trench coat? CHECK. Aliens with harmonious society and utopian resource distribution? CHECK. Humans too violent and underdeveloped to join? CHECK. Drunk former secret agent? CHECK. Writing that's also full of tropes? CHECK.
It's just so bad.