Chilling, quick paced, full of action and suspense. Essentially a Big Dumb Object story, but this BDO is an immense alien fun house, full of mystery and horrors. The story is told through the often witty, sarcastic first person narration of a lone astronaut lost within the maze like object, making for a fun ride, yet always with a feel of something sinister lurking just out of view. I literally could not put this down. Not to be missed!

One of the bright new lights in today’s science fiction offers us a harrowing glimpse of space exploration and madness. With echoes of Space Odyssey, an artifact appears out by Pluto. It’s large. It’s ancient. It has openings that beckon for exploration. And,it is riddled with passages, chambers, and all manner of space aliens from other planets and other dimensions. No one ever imagined this was how the first contact with intelligent life would play out. And, one man, Gary Randell, has survived the expedition-but is condemned to wander the foreboding halls and ponder what he has become. His narration often drips with sarcasm as he addresses “Toto” and explains his actions.

It’s a fascinating exposition, but it is merely novella-length and never achieves grandiose proportions. In short, you wish there was more to the story and to where it would lead. Nevertheless, an enjoyable read and hard to put down.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review.

This looked so exciting. Not just did it feature the brightest star in the best constellation out there, but also it’s a space adventure. From a new to me author and in a novella form, which as everyone knows or at least should is an absolutely best way of trying out a new author. But somehow it just wasn’t music to my ears and yes, that is the pun on the author’s name, sorry, it was irresistible. So why was Gary the astronaut’s walk not all that fun. Actually, I’m not quite sure, I’ve thought about it and I’ll try to be objective. On the balance it had some good things going for it. It is after all a space adventure, one man, one bizarre celestial body randomly found while looking for planets 9 (so sorry Pluto) and 10, a variety of alien lifeforms. Or are there? You can’t quite be sure, because Gary isn’t quite a reliable narrator. In fact Gary might be going mad, solitude will do that. But the actual thing is that Gary is also not a very likeable narrator. In fact the guy sounds like a bro and not an especially bright one (maybe an attempt to attract a younger audience), which is just not what you’d expect out of an astronaut or what you’d want for a narrator, one you spend the entire book with. And so while the author gets to show off his imagination and creativity with the various creatures his confused protagonist meets, when all is said and done you might notice the flatness of the writing or the fact that you don’t really like or care about Gary and his journey and the ending twist is gasp worthy, but really not at all original. The novella was entertaining enough and went by quickly enough, but didn’t wow in any way or made you go look for the author’s other books. Well, it was something to try. Thanks Netgalley.

I have read children of time and dogs of war and really enjoy the authors telling of science fiction, this book alternated,between holding me enthralled with a different view on first contact and exploration and then taking me on disturbing look at the psyche of the books main character, I think this is worth reading just for the psychology the sci_fi is an added, bonus