Cities disappear in this spinoff from the Sky series, A Hole in the World. The tale is a military thriller with a supernatural twist.

I’m not sure if it is because I jumped into this series late, but A Hole in the World is a miss for me. About half the time, I needed a map to figure out what was going on. The other half, I didn’t care. The frequent run-on sentences didn’t help. However, if you are a fan of the series, you may feel differently. 3 stars.

Thanks to Rebellion, Solaris, and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This is an entertaining take on the trope of "disappearing town" and I had fun in reading this book.
It's gripping and enjoyable story that kept me reading.
It's fast paced, there's plenty of action and I liked the characters even if there's some inconsistencies in their arcs
I think it's an entertaining read, I'd like to read other works by this author.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Before reading A Hole In The World my only experience of Weston Osche was his work on an Alien novel that tied into the recently released Aliens: Fire Team video game. He'd managed to craft an interesting story with engaging characters and interesting world building. And throughout it all he managed to create a creepy and atmospheric read. As such, when I read the description for A Hole In The World it sounded like an intriguing idea, one that could be very scary too.

The plot begins with the town of Iron Hat, in South Dakota, suddenly vanishing one day. Not only is the town itself gone, but no one can remember it even being there. People who head to the town turn their cars around and go home, people who work there don't remember having a job, and records of it start to slowly vanish from databases across the world. Except one man seems to remember it, and appears to be the only one who does. This get the attention of a special branch of the military whose job it is to investigate strange events, and if needs be, kill monsters.

When they discover that another town has also seemed to have vanished, with only the one person remembering it, one of their operatives, Preacher's Daughter, is sent across to the UK to assist their British counterparts in their investigation. As Preachers Daughter settles into this new team they begin to uncover evidence that something powerful is behind the disappearing towns, something that could lead to a lot of death and destruction.

When I first read the description of this book I thought that this was going to be a spooky mystery story, one where the reader gets to try and figure out what's happening alongside our lead characters are scary, spooky things happen. Whilst there are elements of this in the book it's actually more of a military combat book, where more time is given over to focusing on soldiers being soldiers than the more interesting supernatural aspects of the world. Rather than focusing on monsters, fey spirits, and other creatures that exist we spend a lot of time reading descriptions of guns and equipment complete with technical specs and names that mean very little to anyone who's not a big gun fan and needed googling a lot.

Osche does give a lot of time over to the characters as well, however, come the end of the book I still felt like I didn't know much about these people; and in a lot of cases found that I didn't really like them. Preacher's Daughter, the lead of the book, felt very underdeveloped, despite the majority of the book following her, and that we spent as much time watching her hanging out with people and chatting shit with them as we do seeing her in action. I think one of the biggest reasons for this is the fact that despite nothing saying that this book is part of any of Osche's other series, such as Seal Team 666, and as such I came to believe that this was its own stand alone thing.

Perhaps this is my fault, maybe I didn't think it through enough; but the end result was me being dropped into a story and a world that seemed to have expected me to be familiar with a lot of things. There were times where Preacher's Daughter would be thinking about her old team, and we'd get long paragraphs about people and places from her past where she'd outline how important this was to her before it suddenly going 'but they're long dead now so it doesn't really matter'. I'm sure for someone who had read the previous books this would have been moments of great callback, or added insight into beloved characters; but for someone coming into it fresh it felt tangential and often frustrating. This would also be the case when Preachers Daughter would start talking about things like the time she fought an ancient god in a strange spirit plane, and drop a chunk of technobabble explaining it. Again, for anyone who'd already read her adventures in killing a god this must have been great, but for me it ended up pulling me out of the book.

Overall, A Hole In The World is a perfectly fine supernatural military shooter book. It has some interesting ideas and moments in it, but with it being part of a bigger universe it often felt inaccessible to a new reader, and there were times where I felt like I was lacking a lot of information. For anyone who's already read Osche's series and enjoyed it I'm sure you'll get a lot out of this one, but for anyone thinking of trying this out without that background it might not be the best place to try Osche's work.

This author is very prolific, and thus produces inconsistent quality stories. This one is in the middle -- not bad, not great. This is essentially Fantasy, and will be enjoyed by many fans of that genre.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

A Hole in the World

[Blurb goes here]

It's the first time I read something from Weston Ochse. This particular adventure seemed to be a branch of a series. I'm sorry if I can't tell you more about the series, since I really wasn't to kin on knowing more about the characters or the other novels.

These one is interesting but it lacks heart. It feels as if it was written mechanically. The main character is a bit obnoxious. As she becomes part of a new team overseas, somehow, she ends being mostly in charge. Why? Beats me. There's not one thing she does that's remotely remarkable.

I can't in good conscience recommend this book to Ochse's first time readers. Although, if you're a fan of the series, go for it. You might enjoy it a lot more than I did.

Thank you for the free copy!

Wow. Great read from Weston Ochse. I enjoyed the characters, and thought the plot and pacing were great. Will need to track down more from Weston Ochse. #AHoleInTheWorld #NetGalley

Author Weston Ochse's latest work 'A Hole in the World' is interesting and utterly fascinating. I absolutely loved the storyline. Through the nastery of writing style and brilliant narrative techniques the author has presented the story in the most amazing and unique way possible. I have thoroughly enjoyed going through this work. I highly recommend it.

Happy Reading

This book has already gone to print, I assume, so the opportunity to send it back to an editor is lost. While the plot structure was reasonably well laid out, the characters were bland and interchangeable, most particularly the convoluted call sign of the main protagonist. I wouldn't like to be under heavy fire from an enemy and have to trip over all those unnecessary syllables to contact my team mate. Plus, I think any woman who is capable enough to have reached the ranks of intelligence in the American military would surely be insulted if her code designation, which is usually a reference to some personal trait, diminished her to an object of mere patriarchal ownership.
The interactions between Preacher's Daughter and the other characters were clumsy, often cut off for no apparent reason, and did nothing to highlight character traits, and sometimes did not even move the plot along. Ironically, the only two believable characters were Crockett and Tubbs, aka the 1980's TV-obsessed boggarts.

Ochse's military expertise is obvious throughout; unfortunately, operations or hardware are over-explained in some spots, and not given enough explanation in others. This is irritating, but far from the biggest fault in the book. The English throughout is abysmal, and often reads like it had been translated from some other completely unrelated language. "By door gunner she meant an operator in a monkey harness around his waist and a long rifle. But that was the end of the military of it." p.45-6. The first sentence here is an example of the over-explaining, as most people since the advent of the footage of the Vietnam war would be able to guess what "door gunner" is. But the second sentence is just a violation of the English language. It honestly sounds like a backwoods colloquialism which might be tolerable in a novel like Winter's Bone or Trainspotting, but has no place here. And the book is full of sentences like that, which make one cringe.
I see in the Acknowledgements that the author thanks someone who helped him with "Briticisms"; these, in fact, were less painful than much of the rest of the usage, as they were a reflection of the heroine's reaction to a foreign country, with a different culture and idioms. However, the author's use of language was grating in many parts, to the extent that it was difficult to understand his purpose.
Quite honestly, the only reason I finished the book is because I was grateful to Netgalley for the opportunity to read unpublished books. In mitigation, it has to be said that the basic plot wasn't too bad at all, and there might be a viable series in it if the author gets himself a decent editor; certainly, this is the kind of book that would probably be far better on-screen than on paper.