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Dead Space
An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic space station in this tense science fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day.
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She's surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life—and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.
Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend's death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester's worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She's surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life—and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.
Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend's death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester's worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.
322 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2021
187 people are currently reading
10208 people want to read
About the author
Kali Wallace
32 books622 followersKali Wallace studied geology and geophysics before she decided she enjoyed inventing imaginary worlds as much as she liked researching the real one. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Asimov's, Lightspeed Magazine, and Tor.com. She is the author of the dark, fantastical teen novels Shallow Graves (2016) and The Memory Trees (2017), as well as the middle grade fantasy adventure City of Islands (2018). Her first novel for adults, the sci fi horror SALVATION DAY, is forthcoming from Berkley. She lives in southern California.
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March 6, 2021
3.75 Stars. This was a solid read that I enjoyed. I made myself three reading goals for 2021. I wanted to catch up on some series that I’ve started, I want to read more YA, and I really wanted to read more spec-fic. When I saw that this was a sci-fi/murder mystery, with a queer main character, well this just screamed “read me!” While this book had a few mini bumps for me, in the end I was glad I read it.
The main premise is about Hester, an AI scientific expert, who was caught in a terrorist attack. After losing almost the whole side of her body, a corporation paid for her to be repaired with robotic parts. The medical bills were astronomical so Hester has to work off the debt with the corporation. Hester’s new job is as a security officer who investigates crimes. When a suspicious death report comes across her desk, Hester knows her life may never be the same.
I thought the premise was great and I was hooked instantly. It’s not too often you get a good sci-fi story that is also a murder mystery. I loved the mix and I found the book to be very readable. However, it was a little info dumpy at times. I wished Wallace would have taken her time uncovering some of the facts instead of just in blocks of information. I know that it’s hard not to have info dumps in spec-fic books, but I think this could have had a smoother approach. But beyond that I was quite happy with the overall writing of the book.
I do want to mention that while some people used the horror and thriller tag, I’m 50/50 on that. This is a medium paced book that takes its time to investigate the murder mystery. It is not until the final third of the book that the pace really picks up and has some action and light thriller moments. If you are looking for a fast paced thriller, you might be disappointed as that is not what this book really is. I also don’t understand the horror tag. A few dead bodies and some violence, does not equal horror to me. For romance fans out there, sorry but there is no romance. Hester is queer and talks a little about her past fling with a non-binary secondary character, she obviously cares about, but there are no explicit sex scenes or even kissing.
In the end I would recommend this to sci-fi fans and murder mystery fans. If you like how murder mysteries unfold, slow but steady, than really ramp up at the end, I think you will like the feel of this book. For the most part I enjoyed Wallace’s writing and I would definitely read her again.
A copy was given to me for a honest review.
The main premise is about Hester, an AI scientific expert, who was caught in a terrorist attack. After losing almost the whole side of her body, a corporation paid for her to be repaired with robotic parts. The medical bills were astronomical so Hester has to work off the debt with the corporation. Hester’s new job is as a security officer who investigates crimes. When a suspicious death report comes across her desk, Hester knows her life may never be the same.
I thought the premise was great and I was hooked instantly. It’s not too often you get a good sci-fi story that is also a murder mystery. I loved the mix and I found the book to be very readable. However, it was a little info dumpy at times. I wished Wallace would have taken her time uncovering some of the facts instead of just in blocks of information. I know that it’s hard not to have info dumps in spec-fic books, but I think this could have had a smoother approach. But beyond that I was quite happy with the overall writing of the book.
I do want to mention that while some people used the horror and thriller tag, I’m 50/50 on that. This is a medium paced book that takes its time to investigate the murder mystery. It is not until the final third of the book that the pace really picks up and has some action and light thriller moments. If you are looking for a fast paced thriller, you might be disappointed as that is not what this book really is. I also don’t understand the horror tag. A few dead bodies and some violence, does not equal horror to me. For romance fans out there, sorry but there is no romance. Hester is queer and talks a little about her past fling with a non-binary secondary character, she obviously cares about, but there are no explicit sex scenes or even kissing.
In the end I would recommend this to sci-fi fans and murder mystery fans. If you like how murder mysteries unfold, slow but steady, than really ramp up at the end, I think you will like the feel of this book. For the most part I enjoyed Wallace’s writing and I would definitely read her again.
A copy was given to me for a honest review.
November 3, 2021
One sentence review: a character study and mystery with the worst detective ever.
"From the first moment we'd stepped off the transport ship and onto Nimue, Sigrah had been telling us that David's death was clearly the result of a personal argument. I wanted to ask her what she meant by that--who could have hated David that much, how did she know, who was that violent, why would they do this--but I kept my questions to myself for now and tried not to flinch every time Adisa asked something that felt completely unrelated or irrelevant."
Yes, I can see how an investigator might hesitate when asking these questions to one of the eleven people on a presumably closed mining facility. Clearly, Hester Marley is out of her league. By training, she is an AI programming specialist who has become an indentured servant to one of the controlling corporations of her corner of the galaxy. For over a year, she's been "one of the so-called Safety Officers whose job it was to make criminals, malcontents, and all manner of other inconveniences vanish before any of them had a chance to impact the company's profits." When a former teammate and robotics expert sends her a perplexing message and then is found murdered, she requests to join the investigation. David lived and worked on the tiny mining asteroid Nimue with only eleven other people, so it should have been relatively easy to narrow the field. Unfortunately, the chief suspect dies right in front of her. Hester, unlike the reader, is dumbfounded by this development and cannot seem to move on.
Understand, it's not bad. But not only is it more of a character study than I expected, it's a limited one. Hester is at an unfortunate spot in her life and is suffering from PTSD. However, the focus on her is myopic, undeveloped beyond the last three to four years of her life and with very limited focus on her professional specialty. As she's been severely traumatized by a terrorist attack on her research ship, and her subsequent rehabilitation with a number of robotic components, she deserves compassion for where she's at in life. It seems clear to me that she wishes to forget about her artificial parts and the attention it brings her, rather than adapt to them. Does that square with our AI expert? I don't know.
"I shut off the news feeds. I didn't care. I couldn't care. This was my life now, such as it was. Picking grubby PDs off the floor in personal quarters, trawling through endless data, looking for petty extortionists, for corporate spies, for black market biohackers, even for snakes like Kristin, should they make themselves sufficiently troublesome to Parthenope. This isolated rock in the outer system, this thankless job helping a rich company make itself richer, the pain in my joints where metal met flesh, the medical debt that grew every day, this was it, this was all I had, until I could work my way out.
My heart was still thumping uncomfortably. I could still smell that dank, foul room."
I can understand why people would like this, but for me, there were too many limitations to push it into 'highly recommended.' As a character study, I believed the PTSD, but nothing about her professional expertise. Seriously, I'm not sure Wallace knows anything more about programming or AI theories than I do, and that's saying something. I think Wallace liked the philosophical concept but her views are limited to "freedom of choice will not result in anti-human outcomes." Honestly, it's like a lite version of the issues raised in the tv series Person of Interest.
Not a big deal, right? Maybe the mystery is what it's about. Ok, I can accept that. However, Wallace really squanders the opportunity to do an in-space version of a manor-house mystery. Characterization of the rest of the crew is almost absent, with the exception of the lead inspector, Adisa, her sometime-lover Ryu, and the victim. Because its a first-person narrative, and Hestor is so impacted by her internal drama, she has trouble getting out of her own head long enough to consider what might be going on in someone else's. Her deductions are limited, driven more by narrative needs than by an integrated process of observation and consideration.
"Adisa looked at me for a moment, then he said, 'Let's get the surveillance and talk to the crew, aye?'
God, I hated the way he said the words, not heavy with pity but carefully avoiding it, like casual professionalism was going to make this any less humiliating. I was used to being talked about. The whispers, the glances, the murmurs that followed me everywhere I went. I knew how that conversation with Jackson must have gone. She's fine with data, sure, but she's touchy and sensitive, thinks she's smarter than us, thinks she deserves better than this job. Get her out of here for a few days. She's such a drag on the mood."
Yep, there's a lot of emotional damage there, and Hector isn't doing much to work it out. There's a reason why I stalled half-way on this, and it took finishing the book to parse it all out. What I did tend to like is the writing; Wallace is above average at actual construction of a story. The world-building felt integrated and solid, The Expanse-adjacent, falling into the dystopian corporation-rule school setting. I found the A.I. Vanguard intriguing, but again, limited, suffering from too-little-too-late. I would read more from Wallace, but this isn't my library-worthy.
"From the first moment we'd stepped off the transport ship and onto Nimue, Sigrah had been telling us that David's death was clearly the result of a personal argument. I wanted to ask her what she meant by that--who could have hated David that much, how did she know, who was that violent, why would they do this--but I kept my questions to myself for now and tried not to flinch every time Adisa asked something that felt completely unrelated or irrelevant."
Yes, I can see how an investigator might hesitate when asking these questions to one of the eleven people on a presumably closed mining facility. Clearly, Hester Marley is out of her league. By training, she is an AI programming specialist who has become an indentured servant to one of the controlling corporations of her corner of the galaxy. For over a year, she's been "one of the so-called Safety Officers whose job it was to make criminals, malcontents, and all manner of other inconveniences vanish before any of them had a chance to impact the company's profits." When a former teammate and robotics expert sends her a perplexing message and then is found murdered, she requests to join the investigation. David lived and worked on the tiny mining asteroid Nimue with only eleven other people, so it should have been relatively easy to narrow the field. Unfortunately, the chief suspect dies right in front of her. Hester, unlike the reader, is dumbfounded by this development and cannot seem to move on.
Understand, it's not bad. But not only is it more of a character study than I expected, it's a limited one. Hester is at an unfortunate spot in her life and is suffering from PTSD. However, the focus on her is myopic, undeveloped beyond the last three to four years of her life and with very limited focus on her professional specialty. As she's been severely traumatized by a terrorist attack on her research ship, and her subsequent rehabilitation with a number of robotic components, she deserves compassion for where she's at in life. It seems clear to me that she wishes to forget about her artificial parts and the attention it brings her, rather than adapt to them. Does that square with our AI expert? I don't know.
"I shut off the news feeds. I didn't care. I couldn't care. This was my life now, such as it was. Picking grubby PDs off the floor in personal quarters, trawling through endless data, looking for petty extortionists, for corporate spies, for black market biohackers, even for snakes like Kristin, should they make themselves sufficiently troublesome to Parthenope. This isolated rock in the outer system, this thankless job helping a rich company make itself richer, the pain in my joints where metal met flesh, the medical debt that grew every day, this was it, this was all I had, until I could work my way out.
My heart was still thumping uncomfortably. I could still smell that dank, foul room."
I can understand why people would like this, but for me, there were too many limitations to push it into 'highly recommended.' As a character study, I believed the PTSD, but nothing about her professional expertise. Seriously, I'm not sure Wallace knows anything more about programming or AI theories than I do, and that's saying something. I think Wallace liked the philosophical concept but her views are limited to "freedom of choice will not result in anti-human outcomes." Honestly, it's like a lite version of the issues raised in the tv series Person of Interest.
Not a big deal, right? Maybe the mystery is what it's about. Ok, I can accept that. However, Wallace really squanders the opportunity to do an in-space version of a manor-house mystery. Characterization of the rest of the crew is almost absent, with the exception of the lead inspector, Adisa, her sometime-lover Ryu, and the victim. Because its a first-person narrative, and Hestor is so impacted by her internal drama, she has trouble getting out of her own head long enough to consider what might be going on in someone else's. Her deductions are limited, driven more by narrative needs than by an integrated process of observation and consideration.
"Adisa looked at me for a moment, then he said, 'Let's get the surveillance and talk to the crew, aye?'
God, I hated the way he said the words, not heavy with pity but carefully avoiding it, like casual professionalism was going to make this any less humiliating. I was used to being talked about. The whispers, the glances, the murmurs that followed me everywhere I went. I knew how that conversation with Jackson must have gone. She's fine with data, sure, but she's touchy and sensitive, thinks she's smarter than us, thinks she deserves better than this job. Get her out of here for a few days. She's such a drag on the mood."
Yep, there's a lot of emotional damage there, and Hector isn't doing much to work it out. There's a reason why I stalled half-way on this, and it took finishing the book to parse it all out. What I did tend to like is the writing; Wallace is above average at actual construction of a story. The world-building felt integrated and solid, The Expanse-adjacent, falling into the dystopian corporation-rule school setting. I found the A.I. Vanguard intriguing, but again, limited, suffering from too-little-too-late. I would read more from Wallace, but this isn't my library-worthy.
April 28, 2024
3.5 stars
This review was first posted on Mystery and Suspense. Check it out for features, interviews, and reviews. https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/de...
Dead Space opens in the distant future, when humans have inhabited Mars;
exploration of moons in the outer solar system is ongoing;
and rich corporations are mining planetoids in the asteroid belt.
A rebellion by discontented residents of Mars has been subdued, and the horrific weapons used in that conflict have been outlawed.
In this atmosphere, AI specialist Hester Marley was looking forward to a bright future. She was one of two hundred people aboard the spaceship Symposium, on their way to establish the first human settlement on Saturn's moon Titan. It was to be a research colony, for scientific exploration and discovery.
To aid in exploration, Marley and her colleagues had built an AI called Vanguard, whose complex mind and innumerable lifetimes' worth of learned experience would be invaluable for reconnaissance and research. Vanguard had a quirky streak as well, and liked to take on the shape of a praying mantis, resulting in its nickname Bug.
Tragically, an anti-expansion terrorist group blew up Symposium en route, killing almost all the passengers and destroying Vanguard.
The explosion left thirty-one survivors, including Hester, all of whom were rescued by cargo ships belonging to Parthenope Enterprises, which has mining operations in the asteroid belt.
Hester's hideous injuries required her to be fitted with a prosthetic left arm, left leg, left ear, and left eye and the medical expenses left her hugely indebted to Parthenope, which could repossess the prosthetics for non-payment.
Thus - two years after the disaster - Hester is working as a Safety Officer at Parthenope's headquarters on the asteroid Hygeia, which oversees commercial operations in the region.
Hester's job is to make criminals and troublemakers vanish before they can affect the company's profits, so wrongdoing is usually whitewashed and wrongdoers are generally expelled.
Hester is in constant discomfort from her prosthetics, and misses her family, friends, colleagues, and the Vanguard AI - who was almost like a child to her. Then one day, out of the blue, Marley gets a video message from another Symposium survivor, robotics expert David Prussenko, who was a close friend on Earth.
David is a sysadmin for the Overseer AI that manages Parthenope's asteroid mine Nimue, which produces water, fuel, and rare metals.
In his missive, David seems to misremember things that happened in the past, and Hester concludes that he's sending a coded message. Before Hester can respond, David is killed, and Hester joins the team investigating his death.
The detective squad going to Nimue consists of Hester; lead investigator Mohammad Adisa, a native of Mars; non-binary security tech Avery Ryu; and Parthenope lawyer Hugo van Arendonk, who represents the company's interests.
The investigators expect to find the culprit quickly and close the case before it generates any adverse publicity.
Things don't work out that way though. Nimue foreperson Yevgenya Sigrah is obstructive;
David's co-workers, including his fellow sysadmin Mary Ping, are evasive;
operational problems on Nimue are suspicious;
and it becomes clear David was investigating something.
As Hester assists with the investigation, examines David's quarters, and delves into David's activities on Nimue, she uncovers a monumental conspiracy. At this point the story morphs from mystery to thriller, and Hester must race against time to head off further tragedy.
This story is an intriguing blend of science fiction and mystery that leaves the reader wanting more.
Thanks to Netgalley, Kali Wallace, and Berkley Publishers for a copy of the book.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com
July 4, 2022
Such a good read! I chose this as one of the books for the long weekend and it was such a good choice.
Hester Marley (this oddly is the second book Hester I've come across in a week; the other was in The Man Who Didn't Fly ; this one is the superior Hester!) is Safety Officer for Parthenope's Operational Security Department, a company that is pretty much like Weyland-Yutani (of Alien) or Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile (of The Expanse). Seriously, the worst. But then this entire back end of the settled space is just a bunch of Weyland-Yutanis & Mao-Kwikowski Mercantiles plotting, dealing and screwing over everyone else. What else could ensconced oligarchical families become? Hester is unlucky enough to have been on a scientific research ship which was sabotaged killing just about everyone and was "saved" by Parthenope only to be stuck in servitude and penury to work off the emergency life-saving medical care and mech prosthetics. One of her fellow scientists, David is in a similar situation at an asteroid mining facility. He sends Hester a strange message and hours later is murdered so a team of investigators is dispatched to find out who did it. Hester asks to join the team and they arrive to find a stationmaster who is just weird given what's happened, some crew members who are straight-up odd in their manner and everyone saying no one had a thing against David and most of the tiny crew don't seem overly concerned that one of them is obviously a murderer.
And when I tell you that that's when things go from interesting to addictive, I am not kidding. I didn't want to put this book down and when I did, I kept thinking about it. It had me up late into the early morning flipping pages until my eyes just couldn't any longer.
Hester is the narrator and her voice was clear and engaging. Her life before her fateful and tragic journey on Symposium and all her work with the AI named Vanguard (or by its chosen name Bug) she and her colleague made and instructed were expressed wonderfully. I felt bad for all she had lost and hoped she would not just succeed in the investigation but also regain a more hopeful life trajectory. The hellscape that is presented here is corporatocracy run amok on meth and just using people as grist at every turn for ever more consolidated power. It's bleak but even from those family-named corporations, there are characters that were awesome (Hugo van Arondonk was stellar and I came around to Neeta Hunter). It was nice to see Hester's suppositions about those two were challenged. I also loved Adisa, Hester's superior investigator on the team. He was from Mars and had such an interesting story. Ryu was also a good character but I didn't feel the reader got to know them as well as the others though their background story that was given was interesting. Honestly, I would happily spend time with all these characters in another book. They were all interesting and left me wanting more.
The mystery was well done and I enjoyed this puzzle. I worked out some things and not others, fell for a couple red herrings and misdirection and loved it all. The last third was very tense and I couldn't read fast enough but also was really worried that those I was pulling for would fail. There were plenty of villains to go around and the chances they'd all be foiled was pretty low. It made for great suspense. Also, the weapons descriptions were well and truly scary. I really didn't want this to end but when it did, I could only smile.
This is my second read by Kali Wallace and I would definitely read another.
Highly Recommended.
Some of my favourite quotes:
The Made me LOL!:
"For fuck’s sake, having a conversation with her was like chasing a narcissistic butterfly through a shit-filled meadow. I had no idea if she was doing it to keep me off-balance or if she just didn’t know how to follow one thought with another."
"...Nobody kills people out here. What’s the point? We’re all so fucking close to dying anyway.”
"I stared right back and waited. I had spent most of my academic life working alongside people who believed their ancestors had been shat directly out of William the Conqueror’s ass."
The thoughtful:
"Mistakes of the past was what people said when they wanted to talk about the horrors of the Martian war without acknowledging that those horrors had been entirely intentional."
"Whatever usual parameters defined friendships, relationships, or friendly but distant exes, those rules didn’t apply anymore, not in the asteroid belt, where everybody was counting the dollars in their personal debt and the days on their corporate contracts, and information was more valuable than human life."
"Knowing an ugly truth and having the power to fight it are two very different things."
The hellscape reminders::
"Maybe the strain of being stuck on an asteroid mine had broken him. It happened. A couple of months ago I had investigated a man who had snapped midshift and slowly, deliberately, methodically impaled himself with twelve iron rods before anybody noticed. He had missed all of his major organs and survived. He said afterward he did it because he was bored. That was what life in space could do to people."
"I was never given a choice, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words aloud. It was true, and it was a comforting lie. We always had a choice. It was just that the companies we worked for were very good at making sure all of our choices were bad ones."
Hester Marley (this oddly is the second book Hester I've come across in a week; the other was in The Man Who Didn't Fly ; this one is the superior Hester!) is Safety Officer for Parthenope's Operational Security Department, a company that is pretty much like Weyland-Yutani (of Alien) or Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile (of The Expanse). Seriously, the worst. But then this entire back end of the settled space is just a bunch of Weyland-Yutanis & Mao-Kwikowski Mercantiles plotting, dealing and screwing over everyone else. What else could ensconced oligarchical families become? Hester is unlucky enough to have been on a scientific research ship which was sabotaged killing just about everyone and was "saved" by Parthenope only to be stuck in servitude and penury to work off the emergency life-saving medical care and mech prosthetics. One of her fellow scientists, David is in a similar situation at an asteroid mining facility. He sends Hester a strange message and hours later is murdered so a team of investigators is dispatched to find out who did it. Hester asks to join the team and they arrive to find a stationmaster who is just weird given what's happened, some crew members who are straight-up odd in their manner and everyone saying no one had a thing against David and most of the tiny crew don't seem overly concerned that one of them is obviously a murderer.
And when I tell you that that's when things go from interesting to addictive, I am not kidding. I didn't want to put this book down and when I did, I kept thinking about it. It had me up late into the early morning flipping pages until my eyes just couldn't any longer.
Hester is the narrator and her voice was clear and engaging. Her life before her fateful and tragic journey on Symposium and all her work with the AI named Vanguard (or by its chosen name Bug) she and her colleague made and instructed were expressed wonderfully. I felt bad for all she had lost and hoped she would not just succeed in the investigation but also regain a more hopeful life trajectory. The hellscape that is presented here is corporatocracy run amok on meth and just using people as grist at every turn for ever more consolidated power. It's bleak but even from those family-named corporations, there are characters that were awesome (Hugo van Arondonk was stellar and I came around to Neeta Hunter). It was nice to see Hester's suppositions about those two were challenged. I also loved Adisa, Hester's superior investigator on the team. He was from Mars and had such an interesting story. Ryu was also a good character but I didn't feel the reader got to know them as well as the others though their background story that was given was interesting. Honestly, I would happily spend time with all these characters in another book. They were all interesting and left me wanting more.
The mystery was well done and I enjoyed this puzzle. I worked out some things and not others, fell for a couple red herrings and misdirection and loved it all. The last third was very tense and I couldn't read fast enough but also was really worried that those I was pulling for would fail. There were plenty of villains to go around and the chances they'd all be foiled was pretty low. It made for great suspense. Also, the weapons descriptions were well and truly scary. I really didn't want this to end but when it did, I could only smile.
This is my second read by Kali Wallace and I would definitely read another.
Highly Recommended.
Some of my favourite quotes:
The Made me LOL!:
"For fuck’s sake, having a conversation with her was like chasing a narcissistic butterfly through a shit-filled meadow. I had no idea if she was doing it to keep me off-balance or if she just didn’t know how to follow one thought with another."
"...Nobody kills people out here. What’s the point? We’re all so fucking close to dying anyway.”
"I stared right back and waited. I had spent most of my academic life working alongside people who believed their ancestors had been shat directly out of William the Conqueror’s ass."
The thoughtful:
"Mistakes of the past was what people said when they wanted to talk about the horrors of the Martian war without acknowledging that those horrors had been entirely intentional."
"Whatever usual parameters defined friendships, relationships, or friendly but distant exes, those rules didn’t apply anymore, not in the asteroid belt, where everybody was counting the dollars in their personal debt and the days on their corporate contracts, and information was more valuable than human life."
"Knowing an ugly truth and having the power to fight it are two very different things."
The hellscape reminders::
"Maybe the strain of being stuck on an asteroid mine had broken him. It happened. A couple of months ago I had investigated a man who had snapped midshift and slowly, deliberately, methodically impaled himself with twelve iron rods before anybody noticed. He had missed all of his major organs and survived. He said afterward he did it because he was bored. That was what life in space could do to people."
"I was never given a choice, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words aloud. It was true, and it was a comforting lie. We always had a choice. It was just that the companies we worked for were very good at making sure all of our choices were bad ones."
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March 14, 2021
Trigger Warning: claustrophobia, murder, PTSD
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. She was going to be a colonist on Saturn's Moon Titan. She had created the most advanced explorer AI the universe had ever seen. And then, in a tragic accident, it was all gone. Mired in debt from the company that rescued her and still recovering from her injuries, she's stuck in a dead-end job pulling security. Until one of her fellow survivors sends her a cryptic email—and is murdered. Hester finagles her way onto the investigation, and discovers not everything is as it seems...
WHY IS NO ONE ELSE TALKING ABOUT THIS?!?!
I need everyone else to get on this!!!
Seriously!
This book takes the issues of unchecked capitalism and fucking goes with the natural progression (deprogression?) of life in space moderated by companies and corporations.
It's several centuries into the future. Earth exists, but many have migrated to the solar system—although after the brutal war with Mars (which was more of an unequal battle called a war that was instead a massacre and massive violation of human rights), the solar system is mainly ruled by the leaders of the moon and the mega corporations who rule the mining and extraction operations within the asteroid belt.
Each mining station is run by the corporation, with Overseer AIs in charge of ensuring their human inhabitants are kept alive and the equipment kept operating (except certain life support functions, because the AIs are growing smarter despite the checks and balances and limitations).
Think about the old mining towns of the not-so-distant past, which were fairly deregulated and owned and operated by the company, which had carte blanche authority in their area (kinda like what the state of Nevada is proposing for some of their areas in order to entice business). The companies have full reign of everything that happens within their territories, and keep their employees under as much debt and contracting as possible in order to secure talent.
Because that's the natural progression of things with capitalism—there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Hester is experiencing the full weight of that. Parthenope was the company who rescued her and performed all of the (expensive, experimental and unconsented) repairs on her body, and charged her for the cost. But instead of placing her where her skills are most needed—as in, putting one of the most experienced AI programmers with the Overseer AIs—she plonked into security. She does her job, same as everyone else, despite the stares at her metal prosthetics and the pain they cause.
Enter the murder.
Hester gets a weird message from one of her former colleagues, and is mulling about how to respond to it—because David got a lot of the details of the memories he shared wrong—when she learns he's been killed on the tiny mining station of Nimue.
She arranges to get on the investigation team, and it should be a simple thing of looking at the security data and picking up whoever of the remaining eleven members did it, because that's how murders are investigated now, when she discovers that the data for the entire hour surrounding the murder are gone. They never existed.
And the Overseer AI is acting strange.
Soon, Hester is struggling to keep herself alive while trying to figure out who killed David—she's surrounded by reticent miners, an aggressively unforthcoming foreperson, and a killer among them.
Until she begins to think someone else is aboard Nimue.
But how?
There's not much more of the plot I can reveal without massive spoilers, but there are so many twists and turns and foreshadowing and red herrings that it's a wild ride throughout.
Plus, there is a super duper scary scene in the warehouse, which captures my fears of being along but not really alone perfectly.
And there's the idea that Hester is holding back—despite the flashbacks, despite the first person POV, despite everything she is not laying all of her cards on the table. She's been through so much and learned to suppress her scientist's mind and mourn the loss of everything, including her AI Vanguard (her interactions with Vanguard are so fucking precious—she literally is just like make me proud, kid and her little baby does just that), that she doesn't see the point of moving forward or having dreams of anything else. Her dream has been violently exploded, and she feels responsible (she been on the hiring panel for one of the terrorists), and there is nothing left for her beyond debt and death.
Plus, she's dealing with her disabilities, which never go away or stop paining her. Same with her PTSD. Additional rep is that she's a lesbian, and one of the investigators on the team is her something-ex, although she's got too much baggage and too much grief to be able to move forward with someone. There is more rep in the book as well, with LGBTQ+ characters aplenty, and people of color, and an interesting display of classism and intelligence. The lead investigator is a Martian, and has a very interesting background I wish had been explored a lot more—along with the dynamics of who settled Mars (based on his name it makes the ensuing atrocities that much more insidious, and the prison ships and other concentration camps were that much more terrifying), the lawyer is a close relative of the Parthenope owners, and another Nimue crew member is a daughter of the rulers of the Lunar Colony.
And there are the different kinds of AI and what it means to have artificial intelligence running things—from the inquisitive Vanguard (destroyed) to the bland Overseer AIs (who can be...weirdly passive aggressive).
Of course, I can't talk about my two absolute favorite characters, because that would be a spoiler.
Plus there's so much more, and I could unpack all day, because Wallace does a fucking fantastic job of writing capitalism off the rails—it's all the more terrifying because it could absolutely happen, and in many of the instances has already happened.
Space and location just become a setting, albeit a terrifying one. Because who doesn't want to be trapped on an isolated rock in space with a faulty AI and a killer on the loose?
I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review
We always had a choice. It was just that the companies we worked for were very good at making sure all of our choices were bad ones.
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. She was going to be a colonist on Saturn's Moon Titan. She had created the most advanced explorer AI the universe had ever seen. And then, in a tragic accident, it was all gone. Mired in debt from the company that rescued her and still recovering from her injuries, she's stuck in a dead-end job pulling security. Until one of her fellow survivors sends her a cryptic email—and is murdered. Hester finagles her way onto the investigation, and discovers not everything is as it seems...
WHY IS NO ONE ELSE TALKING ABOUT THIS?!?!
I need everyone else to get on this!!!
Seriously!
People who lived under constant surveillance either forgot or stopped caring that they were being watched at all times.
This book takes the issues of unchecked capitalism and fucking goes with the natural progression (deprogression?) of life in space moderated by companies and corporations.
It's several centuries into the future. Earth exists, but many have migrated to the solar system—although after the brutal war with Mars (which was more of an unequal battle called a war that was instead a massacre and massive violation of human rights), the solar system is mainly ruled by the leaders of the moon and the mega corporations who rule the mining and extraction operations within the asteroid belt.
Hygiea was very much a company town: company owned, company operated, company surveilled and secured.
Each mining station is run by the corporation, with Overseer AIs in charge of ensuring their human inhabitants are kept alive and the equipment kept operating (except certain life support functions, because the AIs are growing smarter despite the checks and balances and limitations).
Think about the old mining towns of the not-so-distant past, which were fairly deregulated and owned and operated by the company, which had carte blanche authority in their area (kinda like what the state of Nevada is proposing for some of their areas in order to entice business). The companies have full reign of everything that happens within their territories, and keep their employees under as much debt and contracting as possible in order to secure talent.
Because that's the natural progression of things with capitalism—there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Hester is experiencing the full weight of that. Parthenope was the company who rescued her and performed all of the (expensive, experimental and unconsented) repairs on her body, and charged her for the cost. But instead of placing her where her skills are most needed—as in, putting one of the most experienced AI programmers with the Overseer AIs—she plonked into security. She does her job, same as everyone else, despite the stares at her metal prosthetics and the pain they cause.
Sigrah knew the rules for succeeding as a Parthenope foreperson: everything good that happened on the station was her doing, whereas everything bad was the fault of troublemaking crew.
Enter the murder.
Hester gets a weird message from one of her former colleagues, and is mulling about how to respond to it—because David got a lot of the details of the memories he shared wrong—when she learns he's been killed on the tiny mining station of Nimue.
She arranges to get on the investigation team, and it should be a simple thing of looking at the security data and picking up whoever of the remaining eleven members did it, because that's how murders are investigated now, when she discovers that the data for the entire hour surrounding the murder are gone. They never existed.
And the Overseer AI is acting strange.
Soon, Hester is struggling to keep herself alive while trying to figure out who killed David—she's surrounded by reticent miners, an aggressively unforthcoming foreperson, and a killer among them.
Until she begins to think someone else is aboard Nimue.
But how?
Whatever usual parameters defined friendships, relationships, or friendly but distant exes, those rules didn't apply anymore, not in the asteroid belt, where everybody was counting the dollars in their personal debt and the days on their corporate contracts, and information was more valuable than human life.
There's not much more of the plot I can reveal without massive spoilers, but there are so many twists and turns and foreshadowing and red herrings that it's a wild ride throughout.
Plus, there is a super duper scary scene in the warehouse, which captures my fears of being along but not really alone perfectly.
And there's the idea that Hester is holding back—despite the flashbacks, despite the first person POV, despite everything she is not laying all of her cards on the table. She's been through so much and learned to suppress her scientist's mind and mourn the loss of everything, including her AI Vanguard (her interactions with Vanguard are so fucking precious—she literally is just like make me proud, kid and her little baby does just that), that she doesn't see the point of moving forward or having dreams of anything else. Her dream has been violently exploded, and she feels responsible (she been on the hiring panel for one of the terrorists), and there is nothing left for her beyond debt and death.
Plus, she's dealing with her disabilities, which never go away or stop paining her. Same with her PTSD. Additional rep is that she's a lesbian, and one of the investigators on the team is her something-ex, although she's got too much baggage and too much grief to be able to move forward with someone. There is more rep in the book as well, with LGBTQ+ characters aplenty, and people of color, and an interesting display of classism and intelligence. The lead investigator is a Martian, and has a very interesting background I wish had been explored a lot more—along with the dynamics of who settled Mars (based on his name it makes the ensuing atrocities that much more insidious, and the prison ships and other concentration camps were that much more terrifying), the lawyer is a close relative of the Parthenope owners, and another Nimue crew member is a daughter of the rulers of the Lunar Colony.
And there are the different kinds of AI and what it means to have artificial intelligence running things—from the inquisitive Vanguard (destroyed) to the bland Overseer AIs (who can be...weirdly passive aggressive).
Of course, I can't talk about my two absolute favorite characters, because that would be a spoiler.
Plus there's so much more, and I could unpack all day, because Wallace does a fucking fantastic job of writing capitalism off the rails—it's all the more terrifying because it could absolutely happen, and in many of the instances has already happened.
Space and location just become a setting, albeit a terrifying one. Because who doesn't want to be trapped on an isolated rock in space with a faulty AI and a killer on the loose?
I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review
March 15, 2021
4.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2021/03/15/...
An excellent combination of the crime mystery and science fiction genres, Dead Space was absolutely brilliant, and I believe readers who enjoy a thriller element to their stories will find this one especially rewarding.
As well, we have an interesting protagonist with a complex history at the helm. As the novel opens, we are introduced to Hester Marley, a scientist whose life’s dreams were ripped away by a catastrophic incident that leaves her severely injured and bankrupt from medical procedures used to heal and reconstruct her. Now she works as a security officer for a powerful mining corporation with an operation in the asteroid belt, simply trying to remain inconspicuous and make ends meet.
But pretty soon, her plans are shot to hell once more as a former colleague is found violently murdered. In truth though, David Prussenko was more than just a co-worker. To Hester, he was also a close friend as well as a fellow victim of the attack that left her life in ruins. Even more devastating, she and David had just reconnected mere hours before his body was discovered, because he had wanted to share with her a shocking discovery related to their past work and history. Even without the intense pressure from her superiors to catch the killer, Hester is now doubly motivated to solve the mystery, driven by her desperate need to know the truth. What had David wanted to tell her, and could it have been related to his murder?
Dead Space was my second novel by Kali Wallace, and I loved Salvation Day, so I had high hopes for this claustrophobic and dangerous locked room murder mystery which, amazingly enough, unfolds over the course of about a day on pretty much this one asteroid mine. Everything about its fantastic premise was screaming at me to read it, read it, read it, and I’m happy to report that the book met my expectations and more.
A lot of this had to do with Hester, whose character depth and development were nothing short of extraordinary. Our protagonist is a burned out and jaded version of the hopeful scientist she used to be, which we were able to glimpse in occasional flashbacks showing a happier and more vibrant young woman. But the disaster that maimed her and killed most of the other ship passengers had left Hester with the burden of survivor’s guilt and effectively a lifetime of indentured servitude to pay off her medical bills. Worse, the implants and prosthetics with which they replaced her missing limbs had the result of making her feel even more untethered to the person she once was.
Many in her position would have given up, allowing the darkness to swallow them whole, but our Hester is definitely not a quitter. In fact, we are treated to frequent moments of optimism, usually related to her positive memories of David or her past work in the field of AI research. She is also determined worker, and damned good at her job. Under that sullen exterior is someone who truly cares about justice, even if she hadn’t had a personal connection to the murder investigation.
The plot is also propelled by insistent pacing, with practically no downtime at all. Yet never once did I feel rushed or that the narrative was lacking in explanation. On the contrary, Wallace is not an author to skimp on the details. Balancing world-building and storytelling, she establishes a solid foundation for darkly appealing mystery with not only the procedural aspects but sci-fi ingredients as well, like artificial intelligence and survival in space. The momentum continuously builds until before you know it, we’re speeding along with the speed and force of a runaway train. All of it culminates in a tremendous finale, one full of deadly surprises and stunning reveals.
Needless to say, I loved Dead Space and it is my hope that Kali Wallace, who has written books in many genres and age categories, will continue in adult sci-fi thrillers for a little while longer. I want more—more of her superb characters, her astonishing stories set in space, and those terrifying and atmospheric settings she so vividly brings to life.
Audiobook Comments: The narrator was new to me, but the audiobook producers could not have found a better voice for Hester Marley in Abby Craden, who has earned herself a fan. I’ll be looking out for more of her performances in the future. Highly recommended listen.
An excellent combination of the crime mystery and science fiction genres, Dead Space was absolutely brilliant, and I believe readers who enjoy a thriller element to their stories will find this one especially rewarding.
As well, we have an interesting protagonist with a complex history at the helm. As the novel opens, we are introduced to Hester Marley, a scientist whose life’s dreams were ripped away by a catastrophic incident that leaves her severely injured and bankrupt from medical procedures used to heal and reconstruct her. Now she works as a security officer for a powerful mining corporation with an operation in the asteroid belt, simply trying to remain inconspicuous and make ends meet.
But pretty soon, her plans are shot to hell once more as a former colleague is found violently murdered. In truth though, David Prussenko was more than just a co-worker. To Hester, he was also a close friend as well as a fellow victim of the attack that left her life in ruins. Even more devastating, she and David had just reconnected mere hours before his body was discovered, because he had wanted to share with her a shocking discovery related to their past work and history. Even without the intense pressure from her superiors to catch the killer, Hester is now doubly motivated to solve the mystery, driven by her desperate need to know the truth. What had David wanted to tell her, and could it have been related to his murder?
Dead Space was my second novel by Kali Wallace, and I loved Salvation Day, so I had high hopes for this claustrophobic and dangerous locked room murder mystery which, amazingly enough, unfolds over the course of about a day on pretty much this one asteroid mine. Everything about its fantastic premise was screaming at me to read it, read it, read it, and I’m happy to report that the book met my expectations and more.
A lot of this had to do with Hester, whose character depth and development were nothing short of extraordinary. Our protagonist is a burned out and jaded version of the hopeful scientist she used to be, which we were able to glimpse in occasional flashbacks showing a happier and more vibrant young woman. But the disaster that maimed her and killed most of the other ship passengers had left Hester with the burden of survivor’s guilt and effectively a lifetime of indentured servitude to pay off her medical bills. Worse, the implants and prosthetics with which they replaced her missing limbs had the result of making her feel even more untethered to the person she once was.
Many in her position would have given up, allowing the darkness to swallow them whole, but our Hester is definitely not a quitter. In fact, we are treated to frequent moments of optimism, usually related to her positive memories of David or her past work in the field of AI research. She is also determined worker, and damned good at her job. Under that sullen exterior is someone who truly cares about justice, even if she hadn’t had a personal connection to the murder investigation.
The plot is also propelled by insistent pacing, with practically no downtime at all. Yet never once did I feel rushed or that the narrative was lacking in explanation. On the contrary, Wallace is not an author to skimp on the details. Balancing world-building and storytelling, she establishes a solid foundation for darkly appealing mystery with not only the procedural aspects but sci-fi ingredients as well, like artificial intelligence and survival in space. The momentum continuously builds until before you know it, we’re speeding along with the speed and force of a runaway train. All of it culminates in a tremendous finale, one full of deadly surprises and stunning reveals.
Needless to say, I loved Dead Space and it is my hope that Kali Wallace, who has written books in many genres and age categories, will continue in adult sci-fi thrillers for a little while longer. I want more—more of her superb characters, her astonishing stories set in space, and those terrifying and atmospheric settings she so vividly brings to life.
Audiobook Comments: The narrator was new to me, but the audiobook producers could not have found a better voice for Hester Marley in Abby Craden, who has earned herself a fan. I’ll be looking out for more of her performances in the future. Highly recommended listen.
April 16, 2021
On my blog.
Rep: lesbian amputee mc, nonbinary li, lesbian, gay & pan side characters
Galley provided by publisher
Dead Space is a tense, creepy science fiction thriller. Set in the depths of space, it follows a company investigator, Hester Marley, sent out to look into the matter of a murder on a remote mining station. The director of the station is keen to write the death off as passions running high, an argument got out of hand, but there seems more to it, especially since the dead man had sent out a message to Hester just hours before his death.
What was great about this book is that it pulls you in straightaway. There’s a little bit of exposition to open up with, but for the most part, it’s very plot-focused, centring on this mysterious death, with occasional flashbacks to Hester’s past, which do relate to the present, although in a way that’s gradually revealed. So, what you get is an actually thrilling mystery-thriller, that’s also a little bit terrifying too, because they’re in an isolated region of space, with a killer on the loose.
On top of that, there are plenty of twists and turns in store. Just when you think you’ve guessed what’s going on, there’s yet another to leave you just a bit winded (in the best way). It’s because of those twists and turns that you just won’t want to put the book down. I read it in a single sitting late at night (probably not the best idea, because of the aforementioned creepiness) because I couldn’t countenance the thought of not finishing it. I couldn’t leave the mystery unsolved.
But, really, it wouldn’t be much of a thriller if you didn’t also love the characters, and Kali Wallace is expert at creating characters you want to root for. It’s not just Hester here, it’s the investigative team she’s working with and, occasionally, the suspects too. You are as invested in getting to the bottom of things as they are, partly because they are, because Wallace has made the characters so easy to connect to.
So, I know it’s only January, and there’s another 11 months of the year to go, but I really think this may end up being one of my favourite reads of 2021.
Rep: lesbian amputee mc, nonbinary li, lesbian, gay & pan side characters
Galley provided by publisher
Dead Space is a tense, creepy science fiction thriller. Set in the depths of space, it follows a company investigator, Hester Marley, sent out to look into the matter of a murder on a remote mining station. The director of the station is keen to write the death off as passions running high, an argument got out of hand, but there seems more to it, especially since the dead man had sent out a message to Hester just hours before his death.
What was great about this book is that it pulls you in straightaway. There’s a little bit of exposition to open up with, but for the most part, it’s very plot-focused, centring on this mysterious death, with occasional flashbacks to Hester’s past, which do relate to the present, although in a way that’s gradually revealed. So, what you get is an actually thrilling mystery-thriller, that’s also a little bit terrifying too, because they’re in an isolated region of space, with a killer on the loose.
On top of that, there are plenty of twists and turns in store. Just when you think you’ve guessed what’s going on, there’s yet another to leave you just a bit winded (in the best way). It’s because of those twists and turns that you just won’t want to put the book down. I read it in a single sitting late at night (probably not the best idea, because of the aforementioned creepiness) because I couldn’t countenance the thought of not finishing it. I couldn’t leave the mystery unsolved.
But, really, it wouldn’t be much of a thriller if you didn’t also love the characters, and Kali Wallace is expert at creating characters you want to root for. It’s not just Hester here, it’s the investigative team she’s working with and, occasionally, the suspects too. You are as invested in getting to the bottom of things as they are, partly because they are, because Wallace has made the characters so easy to connect to.
So, I know it’s only January, and there’s another 11 months of the year to go, but I really think this may end up being one of my favourite reads of 2021.
April 4, 2021
An absolutely solid mystery/thriller SF. This is my second book by Wallace, and her writing and storytelling acumen has only improved since Salvation Day. Dead Space features a nice balance of dialogue and action, backstory neatly woven into the narrative, and all with a perfect sense of pacing.
I particularly loved the idea of Vanguard, an AI specifically designed for curiosity and scientific exploration. The small bits we get about Vanguard's growth and development were so tantalizing and made me wish there was a separate book just about that.
The characters in Dead Space were swiftly developed into complex and believable people, and I had no trouble becoming invested in them pretty much from the start.
An excellent little pick me up thriller; even better than I had anticipated.
I particularly loved the idea of Vanguard, an AI specifically designed for curiosity and scientific exploration. The small bits we get about Vanguard's growth and development were so tantalizing and made me wish there was a separate book just about that.
The characters in Dead Space were swiftly developed into complex and believable people, and I had no trouble becoming invested in them pretty much from the start.
An excellent little pick me up thriller; even better than I had anticipated.
January 13, 2022
This is a SF murder mystery with sharp critique of corporate rule. I read it because the novel was published in 2021 and thus is eligible for 2022 Hugo nominations.
This is a story of Hester Marley, how works as a security officer of Parthenope’s Operational Security Department on one of mining asteroids in the Solar system. She was a victim of terrorist attack, which blow a research vessel headed to Titan and now half of her left side of the body is replaced with metallic prosthetics (even one eye and ear). In order to repay for her reconstruction, she took that job, despite her profession was growing up AIs. At the start she received a strange message from a man, who was with her during the attack, where he tells her “everything was a lie” but being to vague, assuming that the messenger will be monitored. Soon after she finds out that he is dead on a smaller asteroid and she is ordered to solve the murder.
It is partially a mystery, which is solved roughly in the middle of the story, and then it turns thriller, as antagonistic forces try to keep Hester from spreading the truth.
I was not impressed. A reader is fed some infodumps, but they are often not directly linked to the story, like that there was a war when Mars tried to get independence, with atrocities and now there is a strict control over production of weapons, or that she trained her AI that ought to explore oceans on Titan, by allowing it to dive on Earth… the critique of corporations (Parthenope in this case) for restoring her just to drown her in debt:
The manager AI that organized all of the company’s personnel had looked at my skills, looked at my qualifications, looked at my debt, looked at the medical bills that would only continue to grow. It had looked at how I had gotten into that mess in the first place and how likely I was to leave at the first opportunity. It had made a calculation designed to maximize how long the company could keep me under its thumb for the least amount of pay.
She is a specialist in AI that could get higher wages working in her specialty (and making more money for the company!), but in pure spite she is set to low paying but also low productivity job (so no gain for greedy evil corp). I fully agree that large corps are self-serving, but would they keep an employee generating them less than best possible income just for their pure evil nature – I doubt it.
This is a story of Hester Marley, how works as a security officer of Parthenope’s Operational Security Department on one of mining asteroids in the Solar system. She was a victim of terrorist attack, which blow a research vessel headed to Titan and now half of her left side of the body is replaced with metallic prosthetics (even one eye and ear). In order to repay for her reconstruction, she took that job, despite her profession was growing up AIs. At the start she received a strange message from a man, who was with her during the attack, where he tells her “everything was a lie” but being to vague, assuming that the messenger will be monitored. Soon after she finds out that he is dead on a smaller asteroid and she is ordered to solve the murder.
It is partially a mystery, which is solved roughly in the middle of the story, and then it turns thriller, as antagonistic forces try to keep Hester from spreading the truth.
I was not impressed. A reader is fed some infodumps, but they are often not directly linked to the story, like that there was a war when Mars tried to get independence, with atrocities and now there is a strict control over production of weapons, or that she trained her AI that ought to explore oceans on Titan, by allowing it to dive on Earth… the critique of corporations (Parthenope in this case) for restoring her just to drown her in debt:
The manager AI that organized all of the company’s personnel had looked at my skills, looked at my qualifications, looked at my debt, looked at the medical bills that would only continue to grow. It had looked at how I had gotten into that mess in the first place and how likely I was to leave at the first opportunity. It had made a calculation designed to maximize how long the company could keep me under its thumb for the least amount of pay.
She is a specialist in AI that could get higher wages working in her specialty (and making more money for the company!), but in pure spite she is set to low paying but also low productivity job (so no gain for greedy evil corp). I fully agree that large corps are self-serving, but would they keep an employee generating them less than best possible income just for their pure evil nature – I doubt it.
August 30, 2021
It was decent but by the end I just wanted it to be over…
April 23, 2021
If you're looking for a formulaic investigation story set in a vague sci-fi setting, then do we have a book for you. Worried about your favourite characters dying? No need with Dead Space, where you're unlikely to grow attached to anyone unless you love unlikeable characters who constantly moan about their circumstances. Tired of creative, immersive worlds tricking you into escaping reality? Fear not, dear reader. Dead Space piggy-backs on all your near-future sci-fi staples, such as AI security systems, low-G stations, and clever little robots who are exactly as smart as the plot needs them to be. No need to strain your imagination conjuring innovative implementations of technologies or socities. Let Dead Space spoonfeed you all the exposition you need today and, as a bonus, take your mind off the predictable plot which we all know you barely care about anyway, right?
Oh, did you fall asleep back there? No worries. We'll just re-explain everything for you at the end, and if you act now, Dead Space will even throw in some thematic discussion about monopolistic corporations and rogue AI. Don't worry though, it'll keep things light and simple, making sure not to throw in anything even remotely original or provocative. Wouldn't want to leave you with something to think about, now would we?
Go ahead. Pick up Dead Space today (not to be confused with the awesome game, Dead Space), and witness some truly mediocre writing do the bare minimum to call itself a novel. Simply keep your expectations as low as humanly possible and disregard the clunky pacing, confusing action scenes, endless coincidences, constant whining, incompetent side characters, forced twists, and unsatisfying ending.A great read Good time Alright distraction Technically better than sitting around, twiddling your thumbs for a few hours, guaranteed.
Oh, did you fall asleep back there? No worries. We'll just re-explain everything for you at the end, and if you act now, Dead Space will even throw in some thematic discussion about monopolistic corporations and rogue AI. Don't worry though, it'll keep things light and simple, making sure not to throw in anything even remotely original or provocative. Wouldn't want to leave you with something to think about, now would we?
Go ahead. Pick up Dead Space today (not to be confused with the awesome game, Dead Space), and witness some truly mediocre writing do the bare minimum to call itself a novel. Simply keep your expectations as low as humanly possible and disregard the clunky pacing, confusing action scenes, endless coincidences, constant whining, incompetent side characters, forced twists, and unsatisfying ending.
December 8, 2022
There were thirty-one survivors: seventeen crew and fourteen members of the Titan project. Some were relatively unscathed. Six died over the next few months. Me, I got some shiny new limbs to show off. All of us earned a crushing mountain of rescue, transport, and medical bills. With no way to pay our way back to the inner system, no help from the Outer Systems Administration, no employment, and no convenient riches to our names, we were economic refugees, in Parthenope's debt until we worked our way out of it.
And so went Hester Marley's transition from high-flying AI programmer to security consultant for a deep space mining company - one all too happy to exploit the fact that its employees need it for survival and exist very far away from any kind of support from Earth (see also: why I'll never trust billionaires looking to establish off-world working colonies). But now a blast from her past arrives in the form of a cryptic message from a fellow survivor, and a murder on a mining station that leads into a web of conspiracy.
I did like this, first of all - Kali Wallace turns an excellent sentence, and wrote a protagonist who's easy to spend time with. The mystery hangs together, and gave space for some pretty insightful angles on capitalism and its associated evils. But it never quite got to where I wanted it to be, either - it's very mild on the horror, didn't get far enough into the locked-room potential of a murder on an isolated asteroid with only eleven inhabitants, and ended too soon.
In all honesty, if the author wasn't so good a writer, I probably could have left this earlier and not regretted it. But she made it worth pushing through to the end, despite the parts I wasn't as fond of, and she's definitely an author I'll read again.
And so went Hester Marley's transition from high-flying AI programmer to security consultant for a deep space mining company - one all too happy to exploit the fact that its employees need it for survival and exist very far away from any kind of support from Earth (see also: why I'll never trust billionaires looking to establish off-world working colonies). But now a blast from her past arrives in the form of a cryptic message from a fellow survivor, and a murder on a mining station that leads into a web of conspiracy.
I did like this, first of all - Kali Wallace turns an excellent sentence, and wrote a protagonist who's easy to spend time with. The mystery hangs together, and gave space for some pretty insightful angles on capitalism and its associated evils. But it never quite got to where I wanted it to be, either - it's very mild on the horror, didn't get far enough into the locked-room potential of a murder on an isolated asteroid with only eleven inhabitants, and ended too soon.
In all honesty, if the author wasn't so good a writer, I probably could have left this earlier and not regretted it. But she made it worth pushing through to the end, despite the parts I wasn't as fond of, and she's definitely an author I'll read again.
April 11, 2021
A highly enjoyable crime story set in the asteroid belt in the nearish future. The characters and the setting were interesting enough but the plot stole the day. I really thought I had the perpetrator down from the start, but I was surprised, then surprised again. Quite clever.
A year or so ago, Hester Marley, now thirty-seven-years-old, survived a terrorist attack that killed most of her friends and work colleagues on their way to set up a research colony on Titan. Rescued by Parthenope, a lucrative space mining corporation, she is fitted with a prosthetic left arm, leg, eye and ear and must spend the next four years paying off the expenses. Her required home: Hygiea, an asteroid - or family of asteroids - in the far belt. Her ill-suited job: Safety Officer for the Department of Operational Security for Parthenope Enterprises.
Coming home one night after work, Marley receives an odd video message an old colleague currently working on Nimue, an asteroid mine a few hours flight from Hygiea. The message is clearly coded but exactly what its trying to say, Marley doesn't know. The next day, her colleague is found dead. Only eleven people could have done it and they all claim to be innocent. But the more Marley looks, the odder it all seems, from the staff right up to the Overseer, the AI that manages the station. Marley has no experience with homicide investigations but she does with AIs and she'll use what she can to figure out who killed her friend.
On the one hand, Marley, a world-renown AI researcher, is clearly quite clever. On the other hand, it took her far longer than it should have for few to twig to certain clues. She lets the suspects walk all over her and seems to have the temperament of a primary school teacher, rather than a hardened detective. But then I suppose that's just it: she's not a detective, not really, she's just doing it because it was the best of a bunch of bad options given to her to pay her bills. I liked her well enough but wouldn't have been too distraught if she'd met with a sticky end. Actually, that could be said for my feelings about all of the characters: her boss, Adisa; her colleague and occasional bed-fellow, Ryu; and their lawyer, Arendonk. Only Vanguard, aka Bug, softened my soul just a little.
Pretty early on I would have said with high confidence that I knew who did it - I was actually quite annoyed with Marley that she didn't seem to see it. And then the plot thickened and I found that things weren't quite as clear cut as I'd imagined them to be. And still, I thought, I know who did it. And then the plot thickened again and I had to admit that I really had no idea who did it except for the fact that the whole lot of them were shifty as f***. Needless to say, by this time I was hooked. I was surprised by the ending and, though initially I really didn't like the resolution, it grew on me the more I thought about it.
Of particular interest to me was the key role that AI played in the story and the questions it raised about their future. On the whole, I think I would agree with Elon Musk that, in reality, AIs pose a significant risk to humanity (think I, Robot). However, I do enjoy reading a book with a slightly more optimistic outlook. Here, Wallace promotes the idea that AIs are much like children, affected for good or evil by their circumstances and those who teach them; not inherently evil but capable of doing evil and being self-aware enough to know it. Darker than the AIs we see in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and Columbus Day, but not all doom and gloom.
Some have described this book as horror. I wouldn't agree. There are some slightly horrifying elements - the spiders for one! - but on the whole it's pretty clear-cut space crime. The world has advanced to the degree that we have colonies elsewhere in the solar system but there's no aliens and the culture seems much the same as it is now, lending me to believe it's reasonably near future.
Would I recommend this book? I would. Would I read it again? Probably not, but I certainly wouldn't mind if you forced me to. Would I read more Kali Wallace? Yeah, maybe.
"Nobody knows what this company is capable of better than those of us who have to shovel their shit and pretend it's gold."
A year or so ago, Hester Marley, now thirty-seven-years-old, survived a terrorist attack that killed most of her friends and work colleagues on their way to set up a research colony on Titan. Rescued by Parthenope, a lucrative space mining corporation, she is fitted with a prosthetic left arm, leg, eye and ear and must spend the next four years paying off the expenses. Her required home: Hygiea, an asteroid - or family of asteroids - in the far belt. Her ill-suited job: Safety Officer for the Department of Operational Security for Parthenope Enterprises.
Coming home one night after work, Marley receives an odd video message an old colleague currently working on Nimue, an asteroid mine a few hours flight from Hygiea. The message is clearly coded but exactly what its trying to say, Marley doesn't know. The next day, her colleague is found dead. Only eleven people could have done it and they all claim to be innocent. But the more Marley looks, the odder it all seems, from the staff right up to the Overseer, the AI that manages the station. Marley has no experience with homicide investigations but she does with AIs and she'll use what she can to figure out who killed her friend.
'Having a conversation with her was like chasing a narcissistic butterfly through a shit-filled meadow.'
On the one hand, Marley, a world-renown AI researcher, is clearly quite clever. On the other hand, it took her far longer than it should have for few to twig to certain clues. She lets the suspects walk all over her and seems to have the temperament of a primary school teacher, rather than a hardened detective. But then I suppose that's just it: she's not a detective, not really, she's just doing it because it was the best of a bunch of bad options given to her to pay her bills. I liked her well enough but wouldn't have been too distraught if she'd met with a sticky end. Actually, that could be said for my feelings about all of the characters: her boss, Adisa; her colleague and occasional bed-fellow, Ryu; and their lawyer, Arendonk. Only Vanguard, aka Bug, softened my soul just a little.
Pretty early on I would have said with high confidence that I knew who did it - I was actually quite annoyed with Marley that she didn't seem to see it. And then the plot thickened and I found that things weren't quite as clear cut as I'd imagined them to be. And still, I thought, I know who did it. And then the plot thickened again and I had to admit that I really had no idea who did it except for the fact that the whole lot of them were shifty as f***. Needless to say, by this time I was hooked. I was surprised by the ending and, though initially I really didn't like the resolution, it grew on me the more I thought about it.
Of particular interest to me was the key role that AI played in the story and the questions it raised about their future. On the whole, I think I would agree with Elon Musk that, in reality, AIs pose a significant risk to humanity (think I, Robot). However, I do enjoy reading a book with a slightly more optimistic outlook. Here, Wallace promotes the idea that AIs are much like children, affected for good or evil by their circumstances and those who teach them; not inherently evil but capable of doing evil and being self-aware enough to know it. Darker than the AIs we see in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and Columbus Day, but not all doom and gloom.
Some have described this book as horror. I wouldn't agree. There are some slightly horrifying elements - the spiders for one! - but on the whole it's pretty clear-cut space crime. The world has advanced to the degree that we have colonies elsewhere in the solar system but there's no aliens and the culture seems much the same as it is now, lending me to believe it's reasonably near future.
Would I recommend this book? I would. Would I read it again? Probably not, but I certainly wouldn't mind if you forced me to. Would I read more Kali Wallace? Yeah, maybe.
March 14, 2023
a few things, in lieu of a review:
1) whoever marked this as "horror" needs to be smacked; this is like sci-fi crime conspiracy fiction, there is nothing horror here.
2) the author writes like they just discovered the word "fuck" and were reprimanded by their parents not to use it but now they're out of town and FUCK I WILL FUCKING WRITE WHATEVER THE FUCKING FUCK I WANT TO FUCKING WRITE! FUCK! (Not even kidding, at one point I counted over 30 "fucks" on a single page. It became laughable and absolutely ridiculous - ESPECIALLY during any of the horribly boring dialogue or inner monologue bits - and then when "fuck" was literally one of the last few words of the book???? LMAO. For fuck's sake. i love bad words but when you're overusing them repeatedly every single line and every single response in every single conversation, it just comes off as very juvenile.
3) this is godawful boring; i wanted to dnf it so bad but thought it would pay off in the end. it does not. if you're considering dnfing it but worried it might improve, save yourself the trouble lol.
1) whoever marked this as "horror" needs to be smacked; this is like sci-fi crime conspiracy fiction, there is nothing horror here.
2) the author writes like they just discovered the word "fuck" and were reprimanded by their parents not to use it but now they're out of town and FUCK I WILL FUCKING WRITE WHATEVER THE FUCKING FUCK I WANT TO FUCKING WRITE! FUCK! (Not even kidding, at one point I counted over 30 "fucks" on a single page. It became laughable and absolutely ridiculous - ESPECIALLY during any of the horribly boring dialogue or inner monologue bits - and then when "fuck" was literally one of the last few words of the book???? LMAO. For fuck's sake. i love bad words but when you're overusing them repeatedly every single line and every single response in every single conversation, it just comes off as very juvenile.
3) this is godawful boring; i wanted to dnf it so bad but thought it would pay off in the end. it does not. if you're considering dnfing it but worried it might improve, save yourself the trouble lol.
June 22, 2021
2.5 ⭐️ rounded down. I have nothing to say about this book, that's how little it did for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
June 23, 2021
This was a really solid sci-fi mystery/thriller with well written characters and a plot that will keep you guessing. Hester Marley has been one of the better female sci-fi leads I've read in awhile. There have been a lot of female main characters in sci-fi lately, but too many of them are indecisive, insecure and too focused on their love interest (or lack of). Hester is how you do a strong, but flawed female lead correctly. Wallace did a great job of interweaving the world building with the story, so that it didn't feel like tons of exposition were slowing things down. I would absolutely read some more novels by Kali Wallace set in this world.
March 14, 2022
Alright, we are HERE for this! Ostensibly, the plot is your pretty standard murder investigation. In space. But it unravels brilliantly to encompass: the pitfalls of capitalism and the privatization of planets/space exploration, chronic pain/disability (particularly as it pertains to "visible" disability and how that's viewed), AI plot that doesn't suck (this is key because I'm really picky about my AI plots, being a software engineer who's studied AI), trauma and the aftermath of traumatic events (including things like "false memories").
There's more of course but we'll start here. I devoured the book in three large bites (life got in the way of me reading it in one, unfortunately). The pacing was superb. When something big was revealed at 60% I was like "omg that's so early" but Wallace did her best Billy Mayes impression: "But wait - there's more!" And oh, dear reader, was there more. As all the threads unraveled and things got more complicated instead of being simpler, I was so here for it.
It's a good thing I have Wallace's 2019 release Salvation Day ready and waiting on my shelf.
{Thank you Berkley Pub for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}
There's more of course but we'll start here. I devoured the book in three large bites (life got in the way of me reading it in one, unfortunately). The pacing was superb. When something big was revealed at 60% I was like "omg that's so early" but Wallace did her best Billy Mayes impression: "But wait - there's more!" And oh, dear reader, was there more. As all the threads unraveled and things got more complicated instead of being simpler, I was so here for it.
It's a good thing I have Wallace's 2019 release Salvation Day ready and waiting on my shelf.
{Thank you Berkley Pub for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}
August 7, 2021
Ended up more than just a murder mystery set in space. Thought it didn't a good job incorporating advanced tech in the story without removing the human element.
8/10
8/10
February 26, 2021
Originally published on The Nerd Daily | Review by Annie Deo
Kali Wallace is an author who refuses to be pigeon-holed and jumps at whim from one genre to another, writing for various age groups from dark YA fantasy novels to whimsical middle grade fantasy to adult sci-fi horror. Her first offering in the latter category was the phenomenal Salvation Day in 2019 and she has returned to that well in the upcoming Dead Space.
Set in the distant future where humanity has established colonies beyond Earth, our protagonist Hester Marley is a jaded, worn-down shell of the person she used to be. As an AI expert, she was part of a science expedition heading to form a research colony on Titan before being targeted by a disastrous terrorist attack that killed most of those on board. You might think that surviving such a disaster would make Hester one of the lucky ones, but she suffered such extensive injuries that doctors from the Parthenope Enterprises ship who treated survivors ended up replacing half her body with metal prosthetics, thereby racking up an enormous debt that effectively placed her into indentured servitude.
Read the FULL REVIEW on The Nerd Daily
Kali Wallace is an author who refuses to be pigeon-holed and jumps at whim from one genre to another, writing for various age groups from dark YA fantasy novels to whimsical middle grade fantasy to adult sci-fi horror. Her first offering in the latter category was the phenomenal Salvation Day in 2019 and she has returned to that well in the upcoming Dead Space.
Set in the distant future where humanity has established colonies beyond Earth, our protagonist Hester Marley is a jaded, worn-down shell of the person she used to be. As an AI expert, she was part of a science expedition heading to form a research colony on Titan before being targeted by a disastrous terrorist attack that killed most of those on board. You might think that surviving such a disaster would make Hester one of the lucky ones, but she suffered such extensive injuries that doctors from the Parthenope Enterprises ship who treated survivors ended up replacing half her body with metal prosthetics, thereby racking up an enormous debt that effectively placed her into indentured servitude.
Read the FULL REVIEW on The Nerd Daily
March 14, 2021
Wait? Am I getting my sci-fi mojo back? Is that what this is?
A police procedural set in space with queer characters?! HELL YES! I was 100% here for this book.
When it comes to sci-fi, I am quick to DNF books when the science described isn’t actual science. Y’all don’t understand the sheer joy I felt when Kali Wallace described the accurate and dire conditions of Titan (Saturn’s largest moon and the moon my cat is named after) that the main character’s team would face during colonization attempts. Which is to say that rovers would be doing all of the work because humans literally CAN’T withstand the conditions. End rant.
Okay, so back to the story.
Hester Marley has been dealt a raw deal. After a mission that spectacularly failed, she now has robotic parts, swimming in debt, and stranded on a planet that isn’t her home. Now Hester has been assigned to a case where an old colleague of hers has been brutally murdered, and it’s a race against time to find the culprit before the body count starts piling up.
Right off the bat, this story sets the stage for a high octane, heart pumping murder mystery that is set within the confinements of space (hello claustrophobia my old friend).
In addition to the murder mystery, I loved that we got to see the consequences of space colonization and how privatization and capitalism ultimately leads to the same discrimination that today’s society is all too familiar with.
What Kali Wallace pulled off really well in this book is leading you up to certain events, but pushing past those boundaries to go even further than that. I know that sounds incredibly vague, but I don’t want to give away any spoilers, and trust me you want to experience it for yourself.
Overall, this has definitely renewed my faith in giving more sci-fi a chance, and I can’t wait to read more of what Kali Wallace has to offer the genre!
Thank you to Berkley Pub for providing a review copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.
A police procedural set in space with queer characters?! HELL YES! I was 100% here for this book.
When it comes to sci-fi, I am quick to DNF books when the science described isn’t actual science. Y’all don’t understand the sheer joy I felt when Kali Wallace described the accurate and dire conditions of Titan (Saturn’s largest moon and the moon my cat is named after) that the main character’s team would face during colonization attempts. Which is to say that rovers would be doing all of the work because humans literally CAN’T withstand the conditions. End rant.
Okay, so back to the story.
Hester Marley has been dealt a raw deal. After a mission that spectacularly failed, she now has robotic parts, swimming in debt, and stranded on a planet that isn’t her home. Now Hester has been assigned to a case where an old colleague of hers has been brutally murdered, and it’s a race against time to find the culprit before the body count starts piling up.
Right off the bat, this story sets the stage for a high octane, heart pumping murder mystery that is set within the confinements of space (hello claustrophobia my old friend).
In addition to the murder mystery, I loved that we got to see the consequences of space colonization and how privatization and capitalism ultimately leads to the same discrimination that today’s society is all too familiar with.
What Kali Wallace pulled off really well in this book is leading you up to certain events, but pushing past those boundaries to go even further than that. I know that sounds incredibly vague, but I don’t want to give away any spoilers, and trust me you want to experience it for yourself.
Overall, this has definitely renewed my faith in giving more sci-fi a chance, and I can’t wait to read more of what Kali Wallace has to offer the genre!
Thank you to Berkley Pub for providing a review copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.
September 25, 2023
I enjoyed this book. It's a (mostly) fast-paced murder mystery on a small, potato shaped, mining asteroid, with twelve (now eleven) crew members and the AI Overseer. The novel is also something of a character study of Hester Marley, survivor of a terrorist attack that left her with severely injured and needing cybernetic body parts, with astronomical medical bills, and now indentured for five years with the corporation that rescued her. Her assigned job, for which she is not particularly qualified for, is security officer. Her latest mission is to discover who killed her former colleague on the mining asteroid.
I loved the gritty world building in the novel, and the little things like the gecko soled space-boots, the physical aspects of having cybernetic prosthetics, and the relationship between the main character and her AI scientific-exploration robotic creation (I would quite happily read a whole book about the run up to the disastrous Titan mission!). The handful of support characters are also pretty interesting. The murder-bots (No! Not that Murderbot. These don't watch Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. These are spider shaped and designed to assassinate and explode) were downright creepy. The mystery was pretty interesting, especially when the second murder occurs and more convoluted motivations and secrets are discovered. I loved the show-down between the villain and Hester. This novel also raises interesting questions about the evolution and nature of AI, without hitting the reader over the head with them.
A lovely and entertaining murder mystery, science fiction novel.
I loved the gritty world building in the novel, and the little things like the gecko soled space-boots, the physical aspects of having cybernetic prosthetics, and the relationship between the main character and her AI scientific-exploration robotic creation (I would quite happily read a whole book about the run up to the disastrous Titan mission!). The handful of support characters are also pretty interesting. The murder-bots (No! Not that Murderbot. These don't watch Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. These are spider shaped and designed to assassinate and explode) were downright creepy. The mystery was pretty interesting, especially when the second murder occurs and more convoluted motivations and secrets are discovered. I loved the show-down between the villain and Hester. This novel also raises interesting questions about the evolution and nature of AI, without hitting the reader over the head with them.
A lovely and entertaining murder mystery, science fiction novel.
April 19, 2021
I really wanted to love Kali Wallace's Dead Space. Probably because it has the same title as one of my favorite video game franchises, or maybe because the cover is pretty, but I'm sad to say this one didn't do much for me.
So Dead Space is about an ex-AI specialist named Hester Marley, who is currently working as an investigator/security agent for a giant space corporation. She gets a cryptic message from an old friend who ends up murdered before she can return his call, so Marley signs up to investigate. And that's all you really need to know.
But that's not all there is.
My biggest problem with this book is that the plot is convoluted and rather boring, mostly because a good 80% of the information in this novel is straight exposition. So much of this book is telling instead of showing and it's a goddamn shame.
I'm not even going to try to explain Marley's backstory or the the deal is with the evil space corporations or how she knows the dude who was murdered because it would take too long and I don't want to bore anyone to death. But I will say that everything that is explained to as having happened in Marley's past sounded like so much more of an interesting story than the one we got.
I'm left wondering why Wallace chose to spend so much time talking about the past and so little on what was happening in the present. Seriously, the current tense action in this book is so overshadowed by exposition about the past that I struggled to care about what was happening.
And the thing that irritates me the most about this book is that it could have been interesting if Wallace had used flashbacks (which I almost never advocate for) so that we felt like we were there in the past with Marley instead of just being told about it in the future.
Also,Marley is extremely bitter and, I hate to say it, just not that likable or interesting of a character. Well, the idea of her is interesting, but as she is written, I kind of hated the girl. Most of her dialogue consists of the phrases: "oh fuck," "fuck me," or the classic, "fuck, fuck, fuck." And for someone who is supposed to be so intelligent, I gotta say, I didn't really see that. And yeah, her past explains her bitterness, but again, who she used to be sounds like so much more of an interesting person.
I think I would have enjoyed this book more it it had been written as a duology. There's enough information here that it would probably have flowed better if things were taken more slowly, because I honestly felt railroaded by the exposition.
I also felt railroaded by social subtext that both a) had nothing new to say, and b) said it is a very uninteresting way.
Also, the first half of this book is very slow and tedious while the last half is rather rushed and messy. By the time the action finally started, I didn't give a crap. Which is sad, because the last like 50 pages had a good bit of action and intrigue, but my interest in it was almost non-existent.
I rated Kali Wallace's Dead Space 3 out of 5 stars.
You might like this one if you like: confined space settings, grumpy and bitter characters, and lots of plot.
So Dead Space is about an ex-AI specialist named Hester Marley, who is currently working as an investigator/security agent for a giant space corporation. She gets a cryptic message from an old friend who ends up murdered before she can return his call, so Marley signs up to investigate. And that's all you really need to know.
But that's not all there is.
My biggest problem with this book is that the plot is convoluted and rather boring, mostly because a good 80% of the information in this novel is straight exposition. So much of this book is telling instead of showing and it's a goddamn shame.
I'm not even going to try to explain Marley's backstory or the the deal is with the evil space corporations or how she knows the dude who was murdered because it would take too long and I don't want to bore anyone to death. But I will say that everything that is explained to as having happened in Marley's past sounded like so much more of an interesting story than the one we got.
I'm left wondering why Wallace chose to spend so much time talking about the past and so little on what was happening in the present. Seriously, the current tense action in this book is so overshadowed by exposition about the past that I struggled to care about what was happening.
And the thing that irritates me the most about this book is that it could have been interesting if Wallace had used flashbacks (which I almost never advocate for) so that we felt like we were there in the past with Marley instead of just being told about it in the future.
Also,Marley is extremely bitter and, I hate to say it, just not that likable or interesting of a character. Well, the idea of her is interesting, but as she is written, I kind of hated the girl. Most of her dialogue consists of the phrases: "oh fuck," "fuck me," or the classic, "fuck, fuck, fuck." And for someone who is supposed to be so intelligent, I gotta say, I didn't really see that. And yeah, her past explains her bitterness, but again, who she used to be sounds like so much more of an interesting person.
I think I would have enjoyed this book more it it had been written as a duology. There's enough information here that it would probably have flowed better if things were taken more slowly, because I honestly felt railroaded by the exposition.
I also felt railroaded by social subtext that both a) had nothing new to say, and b) said it is a very uninteresting way.
Also, the first half of this book is very slow and tedious while the last half is rather rushed and messy. By the time the action finally started, I didn't give a crap. Which is sad, because the last like 50 pages had a good bit of action and intrigue, but my interest in it was almost non-existent.
I rated Kali Wallace's Dead Space 3 out of 5 stars.
You might like this one if you like: confined space settings, grumpy and bitter characters, and lots of plot.
June 21, 2021
Hester Marley had been travelling to Titan for a several-year long scientific expedition, when terrorists literally blew up her hopes and dreams. Marley was left gravely injured, and deep in debt after her surgeries and prosthetics, and left with no choice but to become an indentured servant for the Parthenope corporation. She joined the Hygeia space station investigative team so she could work off her huge debt.
A death of a friend, David, on a Parthenope mining colony brings Marley there. She finds obstructive and secretive people, and memories from her past swamping her, and something with dangerous implications for the solar system.
Part of the mystery was easy to figure out, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. This story is tense, and feels somewhat claustrophobic as we steep in Marley’s emotional soup of fury, frustration, self-pity, arrogance, and grief. After the initial scene setting, the pacing moved well, as we see the legacy of war between Earth and Mars, and repeated corporate offences behind many of the problems outside of Earth. It’s a grim, horrible future, and feels all too possible. Kali Wallace has crafted a scary, dark story, and has left enough open at the end, that I hope she returns to this setting.
A death of a friend, David, on a Parthenope mining colony brings Marley there. She finds obstructive and secretive people, and memories from her past swamping her, and something with dangerous implications for the solar system.
Part of the mystery was easy to figure out, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. This story is tense, and feels somewhat claustrophobic as we steep in Marley’s emotional soup of fury, frustration, self-pity, arrogance, and grief. After the initial scene setting, the pacing moved well, as we see the legacy of war between Earth and Mars, and repeated corporate offences behind many of the problems outside of Earth. It’s a grim, horrible future, and feels all too possible. Kali Wallace has crafted a scary, dark story, and has left enough open at the end, that I hope she returns to this setting.
Read
May 23, 2021DNF. Not my thing, maybe it will be yours.
June 7, 2021
2.5 stars
Theoretically I think I should have enjoyed this more than I actually did.
Theoretically I think I should have enjoyed this more than I actually did.
April 25, 2021
The nitty-gritty: A thrilling, sci-fi horror mystery with plenty of twists, Dead Space is a superb novel and is destined to be one of my favorite books of 2021.
It’s hard to believe, but Dead Space is my first five-star read of 2021, and folks, it’s a good one. Hold onto your hats because Kali Wallace’s latest has all the sci-fi mystery goodness of Six Wakes combined with the terrifying, pulse-pounding horror of Alien. I knew it would be hard to top one of my favorite “locked room” sci-fi thrillers—Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes is one I still think about four years later—but Dead Space comes damn close. This book has it all: complex characters and relationships, some timely social commentary, plenty of exciting action and a bunch of twists and misdirection that kept me guessing for a large chunk of the story.
The story centers around an asteroid belt controlled by a mining company called Parthenope Enterprises. Hester Marley is an AI expert who was part of an exploration crew headed toward the planet Titan. But their ship, the Symposium, was hijacked and destroyed enroute to the planet, and nearly everyone aboard was killed in the explosion, including Vanguard, the remarkable AI that Hester helped build. Hester herself barely escaped with her life and required extensive surgeries in order to survive, which included a prosthetic leg, arm, ear and eye. Parthenope agreed to pay all her medical bills, but in exchange Hester must work for them as a security officer for five years in order to pay off her debts.
Hester is only one year into her servitude when she receives a private video message from her old friend David Prussenko, who also survived the Symposium disaster. David is part of a small crew on the asteroid Nimue, a robotics genius whose job as sysadmin lets him work with Nimue’s Overseer, the AI that manages the station's operations. The message is odd and doesn’t make sense, and Hester immediately senses that David might be trying to tell her something. Her fears are confirmed when only days later, she’s assigned to investigate a murder on Nimue—and David is the victim.
Hester arrives on Nimue with the rest of the investigative team, including Parthenope lawyer Hugo von Arendonk and Martian investigator Adisa. They begin questioning the remaining crew members—it had to be one of the crew, since Nimue is a remote station with barely any outside contact—but it doesn’t take long before their investigation turns up a number of anomalies in the station's communications and electrical grids. As Hester, Hugo and Adisa delve further into the strange secrets that the crew seems to be hiding, they begin to realize the extent of the mystery. Something big is going down on Nimue, and David was most likely killed because of it.
Dead Space is such a well written, perfectly paced book, and I don’t get to say that very often. It grabbed me from the first page and never let up, even during its quieter moments. It starts out as a murder mystery but quickly turns into something else, and I was blown away by how layered and thrilling this story was. Wallace is also great at misdirection. She convinces you of one thing and then pulls the rug out from under you, and you only have moments to recover before the next surprise. There were quite a few twists and I loved every one of them. I will say I had an inkling of what one of the big twists was, but guessing it ahead of time only made the experience more enjoyable. I wish I could talk to you about so much more, but I do not want to spoil anything!
All of this is great, but a story without heart and emotion doesn’t go too far for me. Luckily I needn’t have worried. I absolutely loved the flashbacks where Hester and David are working with Vanguard aboard the Symposium. Vanguard is almost like a child to them, as they are teaching it how to explore and grow, and knowing that the AI was lost in the explosion cut me to the bone.
Earlier I compared this book to Alien, and although I’m not going into specifics because of spoilers, I did want to mention how scary the story is at times. Wallace has created a claustrophobic, gritty environment that rivaled the ship on Alien, and I seriously could not turn the pages fast enough!
I loved the characters too. Hester is such a multilayered character, and if you’re looking for disability rep in your reading, then you need to read this book. She’s been through a lot, and Wallace does a great job of filling in her past without taking anything away from the story in the present. Even with advanced medical technology and the ability to rebuild a person with traumatic injuries, Hester is forced to deal with her prosthetic limbs on a daily basis. Her leg hurts if she does too much, her left shoulder is always sore, and even her eye has glitches now and then. She faces some big physical challenges in this book—I mean half the time she’s running away from something that’s trying to kill her!—but she doesn't let her pain stop her. And her physical challenges are only one thing she’s dealing with. Her dreams were shattered when the Symposium disaster took everything away from her, and she's become bitter and unhappy because of that. Not every reader is going to like Hester—sometimes her anger at her situation takes over and affects the choices she makes—but I thought she was authentic and believable, and I ended up really relating to her.
The rest of the cast of characters are just as engaging, and I thought it was a fantastic ensemble. There’s Adisa, the soft-spoken Martian who is trying to do his job while dealing with racism; Sighra, the brash, unfriendly leader of Nimue who is clearly hiding something, and Mary Ping, the other sysadmin who worked with David and whose robotic coolness suggests she knows way more than she’s telling.
Wallace includes some timely issues in her story. Part of the backstory is that there was a war between humans and Martians, and things are still tense between the two groups. The author uses this rift to show how racism against Martians is still an ongoing issue, and including a Martian character in her story was a great way to illustrate that fact. For me, the Martians’ plight reminded me of the horrors faced by Jewish people during World War II, and it was definitely one of the more sobering elements of the story.
I absolutely loved the hell out of this book, in case you haven’t guessed by now. I believe Dead Space is a standalone, and the ending wraps up perfectly (with a nice emotional surprise no less!), and yet I want to know what happens next! Such is the curse of finding such an excellent story with no planned sequel. With this book, Kali Wallace has secured a spot on my “must read” list, and I can hardly wait to see what she does next.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
It’s hard to believe, but Dead Space is my first five-star read of 2021, and folks, it’s a good one. Hold onto your hats because Kali Wallace’s latest has all the sci-fi mystery goodness of Six Wakes combined with the terrifying, pulse-pounding horror of Alien. I knew it would be hard to top one of my favorite “locked room” sci-fi thrillers—Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes is one I still think about four years later—but Dead Space comes damn close. This book has it all: complex characters and relationships, some timely social commentary, plenty of exciting action and a bunch of twists and misdirection that kept me guessing for a large chunk of the story.
The story centers around an asteroid belt controlled by a mining company called Parthenope Enterprises. Hester Marley is an AI expert who was part of an exploration crew headed toward the planet Titan. But their ship, the Symposium, was hijacked and destroyed enroute to the planet, and nearly everyone aboard was killed in the explosion, including Vanguard, the remarkable AI that Hester helped build. Hester herself barely escaped with her life and required extensive surgeries in order to survive, which included a prosthetic leg, arm, ear and eye. Parthenope agreed to pay all her medical bills, but in exchange Hester must work for them as a security officer for five years in order to pay off her debts.
Hester is only one year into her servitude when she receives a private video message from her old friend David Prussenko, who also survived the Symposium disaster. David is part of a small crew on the asteroid Nimue, a robotics genius whose job as sysadmin lets him work with Nimue’s Overseer, the AI that manages the station's operations. The message is odd and doesn’t make sense, and Hester immediately senses that David might be trying to tell her something. Her fears are confirmed when only days later, she’s assigned to investigate a murder on Nimue—and David is the victim.
Hester arrives on Nimue with the rest of the investigative team, including Parthenope lawyer Hugo von Arendonk and Martian investigator Adisa. They begin questioning the remaining crew members—it had to be one of the crew, since Nimue is a remote station with barely any outside contact—but it doesn’t take long before their investigation turns up a number of anomalies in the station's communications and electrical grids. As Hester, Hugo and Adisa delve further into the strange secrets that the crew seems to be hiding, they begin to realize the extent of the mystery. Something big is going down on Nimue, and David was most likely killed because of it.
Dead Space is such a well written, perfectly paced book, and I don’t get to say that very often. It grabbed me from the first page and never let up, even during its quieter moments. It starts out as a murder mystery but quickly turns into something else, and I was blown away by how layered and thrilling this story was. Wallace is also great at misdirection. She convinces you of one thing and then pulls the rug out from under you, and you only have moments to recover before the next surprise. There were quite a few twists and I loved every one of them. I will say I had an inkling of what one of the big twists was, but guessing it ahead of time only made the experience more enjoyable. I wish I could talk to you about so much more, but I do not want to spoil anything!
All of this is great, but a story without heart and emotion doesn’t go too far for me. Luckily I needn’t have worried. I absolutely loved the flashbacks where Hester and David are working with Vanguard aboard the Symposium. Vanguard is almost like a child to them, as they are teaching it how to explore and grow, and knowing that the AI was lost in the explosion cut me to the bone.
Earlier I compared this book to Alien, and although I’m not going into specifics because of spoilers, I did want to mention how scary the story is at times. Wallace has created a claustrophobic, gritty environment that rivaled the ship on Alien, and I seriously could not turn the pages fast enough!
I loved the characters too. Hester is such a multilayered character, and if you’re looking for disability rep in your reading, then you need to read this book. She’s been through a lot, and Wallace does a great job of filling in her past without taking anything away from the story in the present. Even with advanced medical technology and the ability to rebuild a person with traumatic injuries, Hester is forced to deal with her prosthetic limbs on a daily basis. Her leg hurts if she does too much, her left shoulder is always sore, and even her eye has glitches now and then. She faces some big physical challenges in this book—I mean half the time she’s running away from something that’s trying to kill her!—but she doesn't let her pain stop her. And her physical challenges are only one thing she’s dealing with. Her dreams were shattered when the Symposium disaster took everything away from her, and she's become bitter and unhappy because of that. Not every reader is going to like Hester—sometimes her anger at her situation takes over and affects the choices she makes—but I thought she was authentic and believable, and I ended up really relating to her.
The rest of the cast of characters are just as engaging, and I thought it was a fantastic ensemble. There’s Adisa, the soft-spoken Martian who is trying to do his job while dealing with racism; Sighra, the brash, unfriendly leader of Nimue who is clearly hiding something, and Mary Ping, the other sysadmin who worked with David and whose robotic coolness suggests she knows way more than she’s telling.
Wallace includes some timely issues in her story. Part of the backstory is that there was a war between humans and Martians, and things are still tense between the two groups. The author uses this rift to show how racism against Martians is still an ongoing issue, and including a Martian character in her story was a great way to illustrate that fact. For me, the Martians’ plight reminded me of the horrors faced by Jewish people during World War II, and it was definitely one of the more sobering elements of the story.
I absolutely loved the hell out of this book, in case you haven’t guessed by now. I believe Dead Space is a standalone, and the ending wraps up perfectly (with a nice emotional surprise no less!), and yet I want to know what happens next! Such is the curse of finding such an excellent story with no planned sequel. With this book, Kali Wallace has secured a spot on my “must read” list, and I can hardly wait to see what she does next.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
January 30, 2021
A lesbian detective investigates a murder on a remote asteroid mining station. Artificial intelligence ethics! Non-binary representation! This little space thriller has so much to offer and had me hooked from start to finish.
I have gotten so lucky with ARCs lately. Not a dud in sight, and this book is no exception. Dead Space follows Hester, an AI expert who now works as a detective via indentured servitude to a space corp. Half of her body had to be replaced with robotic prosthetics after a terrorist attack, and the corp has paid her medical bills in exchange for five years of her life. She has been in charge of solving mostly mundane crimes, until she goes to investigate the murder of a former friend on a remote asteroid mining station. She confronts her past as she uncovers the truth, which turns out to be much more sinister than it first appears.
There is lots of LGBTQ+ representation in this book! Hester is a lesbian, her love interest/colleague is non-binary, and her partner on the case is a gay man. There isn't any actual romance going on in the book, but it is always more fun for me when the characters I am reading about are queer.
I loved the AI aspect of the book as much, if not more than, the whole murder mystery thing. I want my own Bug 🥺
This book was highly entertaining and a good little break from the two longer books I am reading right now. Recommend to anyone who likes a good murder mystery + space!
I have gotten so lucky with ARCs lately. Not a dud in sight, and this book is no exception. Dead Space follows Hester, an AI expert who now works as a detective via indentured servitude to a space corp. Half of her body had to be replaced with robotic prosthetics after a terrorist attack, and the corp has paid her medical bills in exchange for five years of her life. She has been in charge of solving mostly mundane crimes, until she goes to investigate the murder of a former friend on a remote asteroid mining station. She confronts her past as she uncovers the truth, which turns out to be much more sinister than it first appears.
There is lots of LGBTQ+ representation in this book! Hester is a lesbian, her love interest/colleague is non-binary, and her partner on the case is a gay man. There isn't any actual romance going on in the book, but it is always more fun for me when the characters I am reading about are queer.
I loved the AI aspect of the book as much, if not more than, the whole murder mystery thing. I want my own Bug 🥺
This book was highly entertaining and a good little break from the two longer books I am reading right now. Recommend to anyone who likes a good murder mystery + space!
February 28, 2021
I adored author Kali Wallace's SALVATION DAY, so was ecstatic to receive an ARC of DEAD SPACE (March 2 2021 release)! [Thank you, NetGalley!] I remain totally delighted with this exceptional author; like SALVATION DAY, DEAD SPACE is out-of-the-ball-park superb. Combining some of my favorite themes: Space, Artificial Intelligence, Augmentation of Humans by Machines, Kickin' Female Protagonist, and the Philosophical Constraints and Ramifications of Artificial Intelligence, this Science Fiction treasure ramps up tension and Suspense from page one. I don't think I stopped to breathe all the way through. If you like exploring the future, considering what the face of Artificial Intelligence might become, and how humans may evolve because of AI, you're going to adore DEAD SPACE!
July 8, 2021
Hester Marley was a top tier AI scientist on a research mission to Titan, when a terrorist attack on her ship leaves her with insurmountable medical bills and a prosthetic arm, leg, and eye. With no way to pay the Parthenope organization for their "help", she is forced into indentured servitude. When an old friend reaches out with a cryptic message, Marley is drawn into a murder mystery with a side of political conspiracy.
The setup was promising and I enjoyed the beginning of the book, but over time it grew a little flat for me. Marley was fine as a protagonist, but it felt more like she was a means of unspooling the story than a character I was really drawn to. There were a number of action scenes, which play well in a visual media, but tend to drag for me in novels. The mystery itself was not very compelling.
Unfortunately, the biggest issue for me is that I saw the main plot points coming a mile off. Things that I think were supposed to be big reveals seemed telegraphed from early on.
Overall it was decent with a quick moving story, but nothing that really drew me in. There was also a mention somewhere of this being LGBTQ, but it's barely that. The protagonist is queer, but it's mentioned as an off-hand comment and that's it. One character is non-binary.
The setup was promising and I enjoyed the beginning of the book, but over time it grew a little flat for me. Marley was fine as a protagonist, but it felt more like she was a means of unspooling the story than a character I was really drawn to. There were a number of action scenes, which play well in a visual media, but tend to drag for me in novels. The mystery itself was not very compelling.
Unfortunately, the biggest issue for me is that I saw the main plot points coming a mile off. Things that I think were supposed to be big reveals seemed telegraphed from early on.
Overall it was decent with a quick moving story, but nothing that really drew me in. There was also a mention somewhere of this being LGBTQ, but it's barely that. The protagonist is queer, but it's mentioned as an off-hand comment and that's it. One character is non-binary.
April 30, 2021
Stars: 5 out of 5
I have been lucky with my scifi books in 2021 so far and Dead Space continues the trend.
It is an interesting murder and conspiracy mystery written in a very claustrophobic setting - a mining facility on a small asteroid, what can be more claustrophobic than that? But what makes this story so engaging is the protagonist.
Sometimes you think that you have your whole life ahead of you. You have dreams, you have a job you love, you are on a mission that will change the world... and then you watch your whole life crash and burn around you in a single agonizing moment. This is what happened to our protagonist.
To say that Hester is broken is an euphemism. The terrible explosion that destroyed her brilliant future left her with a body that is half organic and half machine... something that has never been done before to that extent. She is in constant pain from human joints rubbing against unyielding metal and a human brain trying to make sense of input submitted by a robotic eye, but that is only scratching the surface... Hester also has severe psychological trauma after her ordeal and PTSD is only part of it. And the fact that she is now stuck in a thankless job she is way overqualified for, on a dismal little asteroid far away from Earth, trying to pay off the gigantic medical debt that only keeps growing... well, you can understand that her view of the world around her is rather bleak.
I liked Hester, even though being in her head was rather hard sometimes because of how hopeless and jaded she sounded, but honestly, can you blame her? But even despite her bleak state of mind, she still tries to do her job as a crime analyst the best she can. And when another survivor of the crash that destroyed her future is murdered, she does everything she can to understand what happened.
I also love that once she understands that the situation is far worse than a simple murder, she does everything she can to keep the people she works with safe, even if that means going on a walk on the surface of an asteroid in an EVA suit and facing her biggest fear - the open vacuum.
The ending wraps up the main mystery in a quite satisfactory manner and gives us a couple more answers about what happened to Hester's ship along the way. And Hester grows emotionally and psychologically during this ordeal, and might I say, gets a little bit of closure in the end? And even though her situation is just as bleak by the end of the book, she has made peace with it, because she knows that her biggest creation is free in the universe to do what she created it to do - explore.
PS: I received an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I have been lucky with my scifi books in 2021 so far and Dead Space continues the trend.
It is an interesting murder and conspiracy mystery written in a very claustrophobic setting - a mining facility on a small asteroid, what can be more claustrophobic than that? But what makes this story so engaging is the protagonist.
Sometimes you think that you have your whole life ahead of you. You have dreams, you have a job you love, you are on a mission that will change the world... and then you watch your whole life crash and burn around you in a single agonizing moment. This is what happened to our protagonist.
To say that Hester is broken is an euphemism. The terrible explosion that destroyed her brilliant future left her with a body that is half organic and half machine... something that has never been done before to that extent. She is in constant pain from human joints rubbing against unyielding metal and a human brain trying to make sense of input submitted by a robotic eye, but that is only scratching the surface... Hester also has severe psychological trauma after her ordeal and PTSD is only part of it. And the fact that she is now stuck in a thankless job she is way overqualified for, on a dismal little asteroid far away from Earth, trying to pay off the gigantic medical debt that only keeps growing... well, you can understand that her view of the world around her is rather bleak.
I liked Hester, even though being in her head was rather hard sometimes because of how hopeless and jaded she sounded, but honestly, can you blame her? But even despite her bleak state of mind, she still tries to do her job as a crime analyst the best she can. And when another survivor of the crash that destroyed her future is murdered, she does everything she can to understand what happened.
I also love that once she understands that the situation is far worse than a simple murder, she does everything she can to keep the people she works with safe, even if that means going on a walk on the surface of an asteroid in an EVA suit and facing her biggest fear - the open vacuum.
The ending wraps up the main mystery in a quite satisfactory manner and gives us a couple more answers about what happened to Hester's ship along the way. And Hester grows emotionally and psychologically during this ordeal, and might I say, gets a little bit of closure in the end? And even though her situation is just as bleak by the end of the book, she has made peace with it, because she knows that her biggest creation is free in the universe to do what she created it to do - explore.
PS: I received an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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