Frozen Orbit/Escape Orbit - The Eccentric Orbits Series by Patrick Chiles

Round and round and round again - It feels like this will never end

I am constantly looking for interesting new science fiction books. And one of my sources for inspiration is going back through (relatively recent) monthly lists of new releases - and it was on one of those lists that I found Frozen Orbit, the first book in the Eccentric Orbits series by Patrick Chiles.

With the first book released in 2020, this isn’t a brand new release anymore, which had the advantage of being able to read parts one and two in one go - now the wait is on for a very likely third volume to the series. And while part 2 was much weaker (and far more more predictable) than part 1, both books were strong enough to make it worth waiting for book 3.

The first book in the series, Frozen Orbit, builds on a fascinating premise: Apparently, in the Perestroika era, the Soviet Union launched a manned space craft on a deep space mission to Pluto without anybody else noticing. It is only in today’s world, that American researchers discover a trace of the old Soviet craft on pictures captured by the (unmanned) New Horizon mission and subsequently launch a crewed mission of their own with the goal of discovering the secrets of the Russian mission as well as finally exploring Pluto. What follows is a (long) trip through space in a proper hard science-fiction format (including a play-by-play review of a refueling fly-by of Europa) coupled with a hint of a cold war spy thriller as astronaut Jack Templeton reads through the diary of the commander of the long dead Soviet ship. And as the mission finally reaches Pluto, additional discoveries await setting the scene for book two.

Escape Orbit, book two of the series, is set a few years after the events in book one. For a long time now, Jack appears to have been lost in space on a solo mission to find the mysterious Planet X while his fellow crew members from book one are back on earth. As Jack suddenly re-connects with Earth, his former crew members struggle to get a rescue mission up and running again an increasingly hostile NASA bureaucracy. Ultimately, only his former crew member, Traci Keene, launches on a privately funded solo mission to reconnect with Jack and to continue their exploration of the outer parts of the solar system and the universe beyond.

The Eccentric Orbits series is a bit of a mixed bag: A curious premise (a long lost Soviet space ship deep in space), a fascinating journey through space and unexpected discoveries await the reader. All of this is packaged for the reader in (so far) two solid hard science fiction novels. As is typical for this sub-genre, the characters lack real depth: Patrick Chiles tries hard to create tension into the affairs of the crew and to add a background story on earth to add to the overall storyline. But those elements fall flat. His characters are wooden, his depiction of Earth’s politics reads like the collection of stereotypes (as seen through the eyes of an adventurous explorer), and his description of the aftermath of a severe worldwide economic crisis is superfluous at best (and actually quite annoying). The underlying storyline, however, is good. While the books don’t bring any new ideas to the genre, they make for very solid entertainment. Nothing more, but nothing less either. Here’s to waiting for book three.

You can find an interview with the author, Patrick Chiles, here.