Paradise-1 / Revenant-X (Red Space #1 and #2) by David Wellington
My Mind is such a Disaster
Paradise-X1 and Revenant-X are the first two parts of a new trilogy by David Wellington, author of The Last Astronaut. And just like The Last Astronaut, his two Red Space books present a cosmic horror story that is simultaneously fascinating (while none of his ideas are new, Wellington nicely builds up suspense and sprinkles in a a lot of action) as well as tedious and repetitive (when Wellington keeps creating new quests for his protagonists to master that all follow the same basic principle). In the end, however, Wellington managed to create just enough intrigue to keep me engaged for over 1,000 pages in just parts 1 and 2 and I am curious to see how he will bring the story to a convincing conclusion in part 3 (hopefully in a shorter package).
The premise of the series is easy to explain: A cop/soldier/security guard (all the same in the corporate-controlled world of Paradise-1), Lieutenant Petrova, a medical doctor, Dr. Lei Zhang, a pilot, Parker, and a ship AI are sent on what looks like a routine mission to remote space colony Paradise-1 (that name should have been enough for them to refuse to go) to check in on the inhabitants. All three human members of the crew have been through their share of issues: Zhang is the sole survivor of a weird disease that made people on a human colony on Titan forget to breathe. Petrova is sent off for insubordination and Parker was relegated to flying small local ships after getting into a fight with a flight instructor early in his career.
After having settled in on board of their ship, Artemis, and having drifted off into cryo-sleep, they wake up to find that they are being attacked by (possibly unmanned) ships in orbit around Paradise-1, that their ship is on fire, and that their ship AI is gone. As you can imagine, from here on everything goes downhill.
What starts out as a very fast-paced space action story, however, becomes a bit of a slog when the horror starts. Long story short: Something appears to infect humans (and ridiculously: also machines) driving them to madness, all seemingly in the interest of keeping people off the planet and away from the colony. This could all be well, if Wellington kept up the pace and if the crew had to go through this just once. But this is, unfortunately, where Wellington decided that two (or three) are better than one and that more is more - and so we have to go through a lot of pages for little gain both in Paradise-1 and then again in Revenant-X as Wellington very slowly begins to unravel the mystery of what happens on the colony.
This series had potential - but it should have been a book, not a series. Condensed to maybe 400 pages for books 1 and 2, this could have been a very entertaining read. As it is, Paradise-1 is just interesting enough to get you hooked and ending with a huge cliffhanger forcing you to read part 2 but without being able to keep up excitement.