Between them, Ben Bova and Doug Beason are the authors of more than 130 books and novels. Space Station Down was published in 2020. It is the 18th book I completed reading in 2023.

Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own! Due to scenes of violence, I categorize this novel as R. The primary character is astronaut Kimberly Hasid-Robinson.

When the Soyuz capsule docks with the ISS, two replacement crew members and an ultra-rich space tourist are expected. From the moment the hatch to the ISS opens, it is under attack. Within minutes all of the ISS crew have been killed except for Kimberly. She has locked herself in a portion of the ISS.

Farid Hazood is a returning astronaut with a strong performance record. Now, he has returned as part of a team that takes control of the ISS. Hazed and the ‘tourist’ announce they will crash the ISS into New York City. Not only causing damage from the remains of the spacecraft but also spreading radiation across a wide area. The radiation would be from radioisotope thermoelectric generators stored aboard the ISS.

While the true threat from deorbiting the ISS is slight, public perception and panic are causing serious disruption. Public sentiment is calling for the destruction of the ISS before it can be crashed into the US. For Kimberly, a clock is ticking. The terrorists have an announced deorbit plan. Unless she can take back control of the ISS, she will die.

She establishes clandestine communications with NASA. She must find a way to disable or kill the two terrorists. That is the only way she will survive. Will she be successful before her time runs out?

I enjoyed the 7 hours I spent reading this 341-page science fiction novel. This was an excellent novel. The Kimberly Hasid-Robinson character is faced with one problem after another that she has to resolve with limited resources. The chosen cover art is eye-catching. I give this novel a rating of 5 out of 5.

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Just an OK. I enjoyed. the tension was great and I could tell there was a lot of research in writing the book.

I really tried but it is a dnf for me. I reached 40% and can't stand it anymore. I'm not a big fan of thrillers, but I thought that I would enjoy this one.

Space Station Down was a great thriller in a sci fi setting. It was full of action and suspense, and I could totally see this ending up as a movie. The book was written so that the space components could be well understood, it wasn't too techy. This would be a great book to recommend for action movie junkies.

Space Station Down has to be the least thrilling, most humdrum sci-fi thriller I've ever read. Billed as Die Hard aboard the International Space Station, it soon becomes clear that whatever marketing genius made that comparison never actually saw Die Hard, and that absolutely nothing co-author Ben Bova and Doug Beason achieve over the course of this turgidly plodding exercise can live up to that simple and brilliant premise.

To their credit, the authors waste no time cutting to the chase. The action -- and I use this term loosely -- begins almost immediately, with the astronauts aboard the ISS preparing to meet and greet the return of a Kazakhstani astronaut and a billionaire space tourist. Unfortunately, both men are terrorists with sophisticated training, and they immediately kill nearly all of the handful of astronauts aboard the station and seize control of ISS. Only luck prevents Katherine Hadid-Robinson from meeting her demise, and she quickly realizes she's the only person capable of stopping the terrorists from hijacking the ISS and turning it into a massive suicide bomb capable of destroying a major metropolitan city.

Space Station Down has one hell of a crackling premise! Unfortunately, the narrative that follows is exceedingly uneventful, dull, and repetitive. The authors not only repeat the same information and tell us the direness of this threat over and over ad nauseam, they virtually rewrite the exact same scenarios repeatedly. Katherine spends the vast majority of the book in hiding, sequestering herself inside the pressurized Japanese Module, trying to psych herself up into facing the terrorists. On the few occasions she does venture out to confront the two terrorists and save not only America but the entire space program itself, she ultimately ends up back in hiding, incapable of doing anything responsibly. A gender-flipped John McClane Katherine Hadid Robinson is not! It pains me to say, she might be the least effective heroine I've ever had the displeasure of reading, and the schtick the authors saddle her with of getting the terrorists on the ropes only to lose her weapons and being forced back into hiding again and again quickly grows tiresome.

As for the terrorists themselves... Imagine every Arab Terrorist you've read about in popular fiction. Now strip them of any kind of personal history and definition, psychology to motivate them, take away any actual dialogue, and make them so bland that comparing them to cardboard cutouts would actually be complementary, and you have the two utterly forgetful guys Bova and Beason have imagined. For being the instigators of this book's central threat, they come across more like background extras. The authors gave them names, which I've forgotten, but they could just as easily have been named Man #1 and Man #2 for how distinguished they are from one another. We should be rooting against these two guys, but instead I found myself wishing somebody actually had seized the real-life ISS and was preparing to drop it directly onto my head so I wouldn't have to bother this tiresome book anymore. Neither terrorist has any kind of definition or personality to bring them to life, and I'm honestly not sure if Katherine is so leery of confronting them because they're supposed to be that imposing, or if it's because of her own incompetency. Bova and Beason certainly don't give us many reasons to believe their central casting stock Arab Terrorists are much of a threat. The authors weren't even willing to invest any time in these characters, and readers sure as hell won't be able to bother, either. It's hard to even call Katherine's confrontations with these terrorists a game of cat and mouse, given that she, the mouse, is constantly in hiding, and the cats themselves are rarely glimpsed.

Clearly, from their fondness of acronyms and displays of insider knowledge on the operations of NASA and D.C. politics, Bova and Beason have attempted to craft a Tom Clancy-like space thriller. They certainly succeed in filling page after page with acronyms, and obviously fell deeply in love with being able to refer to the vacuum access jumpers as VAJ, since we're repeatedly told of how Katherine has to constantly grab, clutch, remove, hose down, and attach her VAJ when she should be fighting the terrorists. What they forgot over the course of this inept Clancy knock-off, though, were the actual thrills.

Not a bad book after you got past the beginning which was very disjointed and had me confused as to where the story was going. Maybe a little too much technical information which may appeal to the technical geeks that like that sort of thing but made me gloss over sentences and parts of the book.I received a ebook version and maybe it was an early version of the book but I thought it could use some polishing.

Story was good overall and certainly plausible. Maybe having two authors has its downside. I rated it 4 stars out of 5.

This pairing of authors produced a very good novel. As the title notes, it is about the International Space Station. The primary plot is that two terrorists attempt to take over the station after killing everyone except for one woman who works to foil their attempt to spread fear and panic.

I liked that the main character Kimberly is a scientist and uses her ingenuity to devise means of self-defense and formulate countermoves in her struggle to thwart the terrorists’ plans. Suspense builds throughout the book as threat piles on threat, and the scenes have the feel of an exciting action-thriller movie. The fast-paced story drew me in and kept me reading as the clock ticked closer and closer to a disaster with the potential to kill millions – and Kimberly herself.

A very entertaining, diverting read!

“Never give up, never give in,” Scott told himself. Up the ante until somebody folds.

This was a fun adventure thriller. I've read author Bova's books before and enjoyed most of them but this is my favorite.

Some readers have compared this book to the movie DIE HARD but I don't quite see that. I'd have to write that it reminds me more of the movie ARMAGEDDON about a deadly, huge asteroid head to crash into Earth.

Kimberly Hadid-Robinson is the senior ranking American astronaut serving on the International Space Station (ISS) at the moment. The crew is getting ready to welcome two visitors - a returning astronaut who is accompanying a civilian billionaire tourist. But events get deadly as soon as they dock at the ISS and Kimberly goes into hiding in one of the modules.

It seems that the pair are terrorists intent on crashing the ISS into the Earth.

This was an exciting book with a kicka** female main character who doesn't believe in "getting mad but getting even."

There was a lot about the workings of the ISS which was interesting to me. But the science never bogged down the story and seemed believable.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys space adventures or science fiction.

I received this book from Tor Books through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

Unfortunately, I was unable to access this book as it was already archived the day I received my approval email. It sounded really good.

I REALLY enjoyed this action packed thriller. It very much felt like Die Hard in space. I found Kimberly to be an amazing heroine that was smart and brave. I love that she was the star and the hero. The writing of the book allowed you to be pulled in to the narrative. The book was smartly written with the story being told from the ground and up in space. Overall, it was very well done.

This book took a few clichės, and mashed them up into one amazing original book! I loved the premise of the story, and the fact that it was a science fiction added to my liking! I would recommend this book to hose who love action movies AND sci-fi stories!

Space Station Down, by Ben Bova and Doug Beason, starts off with a great premise: a cosmonaut and a space tourist arrive at the International Space Station and immediately start killing the crew. They announce their intent to drop the ISS out of orbit, spew radioactive matter across the entire eastern part of the United States, and crash it into the heart of New York City, the impact of which will be far greater than an atomic bomb.



What they didn't count on was the presence of Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, the ISS chief who evades their initial attack and, as the sole surviving ISS crew member, has to figure out how to use her wits to foil their dastardly plan. She is a brave, powerful, resourceful, and wily foe, who these criminals did not anticipate.



Besides the suspenseful standoff between Kimberly and the terrorists, which is most of the story, what I enjoyed most about Space Station Down was the realism. Obviously, I have never been to the ISS. Neither have Bova or Beason. But they provide enough detail that I was fully convinced that the details about the ISS were accurate and realistic. I feel confident that if I pulled up a schematic of ISS, it would reflect the descriptions in the story.



Space Station Down combines the things I enjoy about sci-fi: a near-future setting that utilizes current technology (with perhaps some speculation about next level tech), convincingly realistic depictions of the science, strong story elements of suspense, tension, romance, human relationships, and characters I can relate to and root for or against. I'm not saying I hate sci-fi with aliens, fanciful technology, or philosophical explorations, but Space Station Down pushed a lot of buttons for me. I enjoyed it a lot.





Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Space Station Down by Ben Bova, Doug Beason | Aug 4, 2020 | Tor Books

In space, when terrorists gain access to the ISS and kill almost everyone aboard and cut all ground communication. no one can hear you scream.

Unless you’re Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, ISS Commander, resourceful astronaut, and the only member of the crew that managed to stop and think her way through the problem, rather than rushing at a pair of highly trained terrorists. The authors don’t come out and say it, but testosterone claims more victims.

Kimberly’s not screaming in panic, but maybe from frustration and anger. If the terrorists get their way they’ll deorbit the ISS over America (they’d like to hit NYC) and leave a plutonium cloud in its wake. If she can’t find a way to contact the ground and get around their hack, millions will be doomed, and the space program as well. Unless the President decides to just shoot down the station first.

Steve Berry calls Space Station Down (by Ben Bova and Doug Beason) Die Hard, set 'two hundred and fifty miles above the earth. A space tourist and an extremist cosmonaut slaughter astronauts on the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), and then threaten to crash it into New York City.

As in Die Hard, only one person can stop the bad guys. Here, it's astronaut Kimberly Hasid-Robinson. It takes all the courage and ingenuity she can muster, to survive and ultimately stop the terrorists from achieving their goal.

This pairing of authors produced a very good novel. As the title notes, it is about the International Space Station. The primary plot is that two terrorists attempt to take over the station after killing everyone except for one woman who works to foil their attempt to spread fear and panic. It is well written and a fast read (two days for me).

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook  page.