Here's my review for The Scourge Between Stars. 5 stars two thumbs up!

Acting captain who's kind of a hot mess? Check.
Strong BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ protagonists? Check.
Creepy android antics? Check.
Time to get out the big guns? Hell yes.

Speaking as someone who is already deep in Alien/Salvation Day territory, this book was everything I hoped it would be. I appreciated the no-nonsense pacing that didn't drag out for no reason what would be an immediate, crisis situation. The writing style was mostly matter-of-fact, but not without lyrical shine at times. It managed to be gritty and dark without crossing the line into exploiting the grief and depression felt by its characters.

As a layperson, I can't really comment on the science behind the Sci-Fi, but there was one scene in particular that made me chuckle like a middle-schooler in spite of the direness due to...physics and gaseous states, shall we say. As for the Horror aspect, there were only a couple parts that elicited a "Don't go in the basement, dummy!" response from me, and those were half-hearted at best.

You could say The Scourge Between Stars doesn't break any molds in either the Sci-Fi or Horror genres, but that's not what it's for. What it is for is just this: a highly engaging burst of entertainment with a side of gore, minus the macho idiot heroics.

A quick read (novella) sets up a scenario not often explored in SciFi … What happens when your attempt to colonize a world fails? What happens with all hope is lost because your generation ships are nearly crippled and you don’t have the resources to make it home? When random “engagements” of some mysterious force slam into the ship to wreck havoc on critical systems, the dwindling resources seem like a problem for the future. Maybe they should go back, but no-one remembers why the original colony failed … and they apparently didn’t completely escape when mounting evidence points to an unknown intruder that is hunting the crew. If they are to survive, it is time for a bug hunt … if only the colonists can put their mutiny on hold for awhile. At this point it is difficult to avoid a reference to the Aliens franchise (of which are am a casual fan) … except this was done so much better (at first). The action picks up about half way through and runs all the way to the end; which along with the shortness of the story and underdeveloped characters/monsters, is the only one I have to pick on this story … which was too rushed and dips into fantasy after what was a solid SciFi adventure. Perhaps the author can flesh out the story into a full novel in the future to put these minor issues to bed ....

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#TheScourgeBetweenStars #NetGalley.

First off, thank you so much to #Netgalley, the publisher and especially the author for this ARC!

Oh my gosh this book was SO GOOD!! I had no idea it was more like a novella when I requested it but let me tell you, it didn’t need to be any longer because this packed a punch! I loved the female lead, it’s hard to find strong female lead characters in books but I loved how the author wrote her; not to mention the creepy atmosphere that outer space offers in this book.
I am actually planning on picking this book up when it comes out to add to my collection it was so good; please do yourself a favor and make sure to buy it when it comes out and devour it in one sitting like I did!

Stars: 5 out of 5

This was a surprise winner for me. I picked it up on whim and because the cover was so cool. I didn't expect much of the story apart from space horror. I got that alright, but I also got surprisingly a lot of heart.

Imagine for a moment that you are on board of a generation ship that is running out of resources and no matter how many times you do the math, it all points to the same thing: we won't reach Earth before our air and food runs out. Add to that that the ship is traveling through a literal minefield deployed by two unknown alien species at war with each other. The humans are just collateral damage in this battle, but it hurts the ship and their chances of survival all the same, because we don't have the technology to detect and avoid the mines. Then add to that the fact that they unknowingly picked up a hitchhiker or two when they left the colony. And those hitchhikers are fond of human flesh. Yes, the sum total is one terrifying ride.

What I didn't expect, is that this short novel, more a novella, would be populated by fleshed out characters I would sympathize and root for.  Jacklyn "Jack" Albright is an amazing character. She feels real. She has her flaws and insecurities and moments of pettiness or self-doubt, but she is also courageous and willing to do the right thing even if doing so means facing off with a terrifying monster that tears people apart like they were paper cutouts. She is trying her best to keep her crew together and prevent her ship from falling apart after each space mine, or "engagement" they encounter. She is overwhelmed and terrified, but she still tries everything she can to face the new treat when it arises. That's what a true captain is, unlike her father who chose to abandon them in this trying time. 

As I had mentioned, the book is very short, and I devoured it in a lazy afternoon reading session. And I ended up loving the story and all the characters and wanting to know more. Like why had the colonists decided to attempt a doomed voyage back to Earth? What had gone wrong in the new colony? Especially since the existence of the native species was just speculation, from what I could understand. Who are those spacefaring aliens waging war across the stars? They seem to have technology eons above what humanity can master.  I really hope that the author will revisit this universe in her future books. 

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this action-filled, quick novella from debut author Ness Brown.  

In The Scourge Between Stars, Jacklyn is acting captain on a starship fleeing a failed human colony.  The colonists are trying to find their way back to Earth, with dwindling rations and resources, rebellion, and strange attacks from space around them. Jacklyn soon discovers a few threat, crawling through the walls of the ship.

I went in expecting this to be horror but it has more of a sci-fi adventure feel to me (think Aliens rather than Alien).  Once I let go of my expectations for spookiness I found it was a lot of fun.

Jacklyn is a great character: she’s strong and smart, but exhausted and affected by trauma (including the death of most of her family). She had so much character growth in such a short book.  

I wish there’d been room to flesh out some of the other characters in addition to Jacklyn.  There are so many characters at times I wanted a chart with their names and roles on the ship, I found it a bit confusing. However, it did help to make the world of the story feel grounded.

The action scenes are fun and easy to visualize, with a bit of gore (but not too much).  I loved the stakes in this novella: I completely believed in the alien threat, and I liked the background of simmering rebellion on the ship. This really felt like humanity’s last chance.

At times, I felt there was so much going on in this novella that it could easily have been a novel, and a few plot points were sped passed a little too quickly.  But overall, I really had fun reading this, and I look forward to reading Ness Brown's next book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for my review copy of this book.

The Scourge Between Stars is quite simply fantastic. A creepy atmospheric science fiction horror thriller that fully delivers on its premise. It was short but packed a serious punch and I found it impossible to put down. I stayed up all night reading it even with work the next day in a single sitting. It was just that good.

The story follows acting captain Jack leading one of many ships fleeing Proxima Centauri b, a failed colony hundreds of years after the ecological destruction of Earth. I enjoyed the selection of Proxima b as it is an exoplanet currently being studied by today’s scientists, but the habitability of the planet is still not well understood. Ness Brown’s background as an astrophysicist is clear in the structure of the story.

Each of the ships in the fleet is named after goddesses and I liked the references. The characters also had distinct personalities and were fleshed out nicely, even for ones with limited appearances. The real spotlight however is in the story and intense atmosphere throughout the book. It perfectly captured the claustrophobia of being trapped in a hostile environment with nowhere to go.

The Scourge Between Stars was everything that I had hoped for and more, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the book since I finished! I always hesitate when a book description compares a book to classics, but the comparisons to Alien and Event Horizon honestly fit perfectly. I would scream if this book ever got picked up for a film or tv adaptation and I very much hope that it does. The Scourge Between Stars was easily one of my absolute favorite books that I have read for the year and honestly is also one of my all-time favorite science fiction books.

Ellen Ripley, who??

My most favorite thriller/horror book of the year. Absolutely breathtaking and atmospheric! I loved Jack and Watson so incredibly much.

I really hope to read more about this crew and their next adventures! I also want to listen to the audio version asap.

Thank you so much to the incredibly imaginative and brilliant Ness Brown, Tor Nightfire, and NetGalley for this beautiful and scary as hell advanced readers copy!

This is a short, fast-paced story that promised thrills and horror, but didn't always deliver for me. The premise and setting are not anything new, there's plenty of similar stories out there, though I thought the hints of worldbuilding we get (that they're on a defunct colony ship returning to Earth after a failed attempt at colonizing another planet) were interesting and wished we had had more of it in the plot. Jack is a good lead for this type of story, with an interesting character and an even more interesting family history and background that we don't get anything but hints about until the very end. The idea of where the intruders came from was interesting, but I felt like they were not fleshed out well at all, which is a major gripe for me throughout. There's a lot of great ideas here, but nothing felt particularly stand out or well described.

Jacklyn "Jack" Albright has only ever known life aboard a spaceship. The first interstellar settlers left Earth over two centuries ago to create a colony on Proxima b, but the failed colony dispersed several decades in the hopes of returning home to Earth. Jack's ship, the Calypso, is part of a larger Goddess Flotilla, but they've gotten separated from the rest, and after many "encounters" with an unknown force, the Calypso is limping along with a hull breach and limited supplies. On top of that, Jack's father, the captain, has isolated himself in his quarters and hasn't responded to any of Jack's reports as first mate, leaving her unofficially in charge.

It's really not a great time to be the ship's captain. A disgruntled crew has started breaking into fights and creating a mutiny, the head technician's pet android has started acting strangely and overloading systems, Jack keeps hearing a disturbing banging on the walls wherever she goes, and they've finally gotten a garbled message from another ship in the flotilla, with the eerie message: "Don't open the door."

I'm not a fan of horror, but there's something compelling about a horror story set in the closed and precarious environment of a spaceship. The tension in this novella gripped me from the very beginning and kept ratcheting up with every chapter, literally leaving me at the edge of my seat wondering how Jack and her crew were going to survive. The gut-punching twist toward the end really blindsided me -- that was NOT what I thought would happen with that character, and while the final wrap-up had a bit of a deus ex machina feel to it, it brought the tension down for a satisfying finish. I could not put this down!

I think it would be difficult to give detailed character development to any but a select few characters in a novella, but very few of the characters who were on the page more than once felt flat to me. The author captured the feel of the different temperaments among the crew and especially the department heads. Jack, of course, gets the most development, and the reader comes to understand that her drive and focus have many reasons behind them, including sheer desperation.

A solid debut -- I hope to read more by this author in future. 4.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you, Tor Nightfire and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.

I was really excited for this novella, but the lack of worldbuilding confused me and made me enjoy it a lot less. Obviously, as a novella, there's not as much room for worldbuilding as there is in a full-length novel, but I was really interested in what exactly had happened that led to the people trying to get back to Earth, as well more about Jacklyn's family who had already passed away by the time the novella begins. It felt more like being thrown into a story without any exposition rather than being given a condensed version of the exposition. It was really creepy though, and I liked the writing style otherwise. 2.5/5 stars.

The Scourge Between

[Blurb goes here]

A fleet of colony ships, each with a six thousand crew, flee Proxima b, a planet they tried to colonize. Since the conditions didn't allowed for them to succeed, they decide to go back to Earth, the planet they abandoned a few hundred years before. Their starships in disrepair—Proxima b sun's radiation saw to it—doesn't allow for them to "skip" and reach the home plante faster.

Jacklyn, first mate (and acting Captain) of the Calypso, has run down the numbers, their resources won't allow them to reach their destination. Also, while in the void between stars, something is periodically attacking the fleet from the outside. As ships start to disappear, their last transmissions have one cryptic message "Don't open the door."

As Jacklyn wrestles with ship repairs, and negotiates with two wards from the ship that threaten the fragile peace inside the vessel. She finds a repairman, the man has suffered a gruesome dead. Might be the despicable act of one of the factions? After examining the remains, the medical officer concludes that this was no human attack. The bites on the body make this, an obvious diagnostic.

Jacklyn is now faced with a new threat, one that hides inside the walls of the Calypso.

When reading the blurb, I was all in. A creature feature, inside a starship, in space. What's not to like?

Let me start by saying that Jacklyn is a great example of what a female lead ought to be. She's cool headed, open to suggestions, always facing problems at the front lines...not once does her character comes out as annoying, bossy or rude: even though she has a history of mental illness, brought on by the loss of her sister and mother, exacerbated by the fact that the Captain (her father), has been locked inside his quarters for a week, ignoring his duties, letting it all rest on her shoulders.

I was expecting so much more from the story, I mean, six thousand people in a spaceship trapped along side a monster? The author went in a different direction. He decided to focus entirely on Jacklyn and the few people surrounding her. Kind of a wasted opportunity, IMHO.

Baring that in mind, I still had great fun reading the story: creepy, gory, danger lurking at every turn. The author making it impossible for me to put the book down, even at bed time! Thank god it was a Friday! Even when my eyes refused to focus on the letters, I soldier on, I just couldn't find a page to interrupt my reading, which went on all throughout the night.

A fast paced novel that I can't recommend enough.

Thank you for the advanced copy!

What a great read! The Scoutge Between Stars is a claustrophobic thrill ride that takes place in a failed colony ship that had to leave the Centauri system and return home. Conditions are deteriorating, and supplies seem to be dwindling for unknown reasons. Unbeknownst to all on board, there is an unwanted stowaway, identity unknown.

This is one of the best SF books I’ve read in a good while. While there are elements from the first Alien film, the author makes the story all her own. The plotting is superb, the tension well ratcheted, the characters well drawn, all making this a book that just kept me riveted to the page.

Highly recommended.

My thanks to Tor Nightfire and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this remarkable debut novel.

I'm excited for this book to come out so everyone else can enjoy this as well. The story was interesting and the stakes were pretty high. I would definitely recommend this book.

God this was what I was hoping for from the description, it had the tense atmosphere that I was looking for. The story was interesting and I was hoping for the main characters survival. I could feel the claustrophobic elements in the book and I felt like I was in the story with the characters. I'm excited to read more from Ness Brown, as this was enjoyable. Overall this was a great scifi read and I really enjoyed getting to go on this journey with them.

"The hairs on Jacklyn’s nape stood up. “What do you mean?” she asked lowly, even though she already knew. “She used to beg me to make the ship go faster,” he sighed, pulling himself to his feet. “She said the ship was infested, and the longer we took to reach home the worse the vermin would get.”