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Diving Universe #1
Diving into the Wreck
Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars. Sometimes she salvages for money, but mostly she’s an active historian. She wants to know about the past—to experience it firsthand. Once she’s dived the ship, she’ll either leave it for others to find or file a claim so that she can bring tourists to dive it as well. It’s a good life for a tough loner, with more interest in artifacts than people.
Then one day, Boss finds the claim of a lifetime: an enormous spacecraft, incredibly old, and apparently Earth-made. It’s impossible for something so old, built in the days before Faster Than Light travel, to have journeyed this far from Earth. It shouldn’t be here. It can’t be here. And yet, it is. Boss’s curiosity is up, and she’s determined to investigate. She hires a group of divers to explore the wreck with her, the best team she can assemble. But some secrets are best kept hidden, and the past won’t give up its treasures without exacting a price in blood.
Then one day, Boss finds the claim of a lifetime: an enormous spacecraft, incredibly old, and apparently Earth-made. It’s impossible for something so old, built in the days before Faster Than Light travel, to have journeyed this far from Earth. It shouldn’t be here. It can’t be here. And yet, it is. Boss’s curiosity is up, and she’s determined to investigate. She hires a group of divers to explore the wreck with her, the best team she can assemble. But some secrets are best kept hidden, and the past won’t give up its treasures without exacting a price in blood.
269 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
624 people are currently reading
1827 people want to read
About the author
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
1,342 books715 followersKristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer. She has written many novels under various names, including Kristine Grayson for romance, and Kris Nelscott for mystery. Her novels have made the bestseller lists –even in London– and have been published in 14 countries and 13 different languages.
Her awards range from the Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award to the John W. Campbell Award. In the past year, she has been nominated for the Hugo, the Shamus, and the Anthony Award. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won a Hugo award for editing and a Hugo award for fiction.
In addition, she's written a number of nonfiction articles over the years, with her latest being the book "A Freelancer's Survival Guide".
She has also published as:
Sandy Schofield (collaborations with husband Dean Wesley Smith)
Kristine Grayson - romances
Kathryn Wesley (collaborations with husband Dean Wesley Smith)
Kris Nelscott - mysteries
Kris Rusch - historical fiction
Kris DeLake - romances
Her awards range from the Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award to the John W. Campbell Award. In the past year, she has been nominated for the Hugo, the Shamus, and the Anthony Award. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won a Hugo award for editing and a Hugo award for fiction.
In addition, she's written a number of nonfiction articles over the years, with her latest being the book "A Freelancer's Survival Guide".
She has also published as:
Sandy Schofield (collaborations with husband Dean Wesley Smith)
Kristine Grayson - romances
Kathryn Wesley (collaborations with husband Dean Wesley Smith)
Kris Nelscott - mysteries
Kris Rusch - historical fiction
Kris DeLake - romances
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 288 reviews
December 9, 2018
Look for you who like this book, I'm sorry. I wanted to like this one, it sounded so good.
In my opinion what we have here is another case of great idea, poor execution. The "hook" here is that our protagonist is a wreck diver. She travels through space looking for derelict or abandoned ships. She then explores them or claims them...sometimes she leads tourists on tours through them.
Okay sounds good huh? The thing is... Well there are several things. I got almost halfway through the book (which is really a series of novellas strung into a longer book) before I returned it to Audible. What we seem to have here is a seemingly half thought out multiverse. First of all it's set 5000+ years in the future. Yet somehow the vacuum suits are only good for 60 minutes of breathable air (I mean come on we can do better than that now). Also in spite of the fact that humans have been "spacefaring" for many centuries their "space suits" not only can't carry more than an hour's air/oxygen everyone seems to live in deadly fear of "sharp edges and corners". Over and over we hear about how the suits can be ruptured by sharp edges...
Our heroine goes on and on about how she's been been doing this for many years and is ready for it. then she goes on and on about her panic. I think the writer was going for a semi-horror (maybe something like the first Alien movie) but it never comes off.
So, halfway through I pitched it...to bad. Can't recommend this one.
In my opinion what we have here is another case of great idea, poor execution. The "hook" here is that our protagonist is a wreck diver. She travels through space looking for derelict or abandoned ships. She then explores them or claims them...sometimes she leads tourists on tours through them.
Okay sounds good huh? The thing is... Well there are several things. I got almost halfway through the book (which is really a series of novellas strung into a longer book) before I returned it to Audible. What we seem to have here is a seemingly half thought out multiverse. First of all it's set 5000+ years in the future. Yet somehow the vacuum suits are only good for 60 minutes of breathable air (I mean come on we can do better than that now). Also in spite of the fact that humans have been "spacefaring" for many centuries their "space suits" not only can't carry more than an hour's air/oxygen everyone seems to live in deadly fear of "sharp edges and corners". Over and over we hear about how the suits can be ruptured by sharp edges...
Our heroine goes on and on about how she's been been doing this for many years and is ready for it. then she goes on and on about her panic. I think the writer was going for a semi-horror (maybe something like the first Alien movie) but it never comes off.
So, halfway through I pitched it...to bad. Can't recommend this one.
February 19, 2012
OH YAY THIS ISN"T A ROMANCE BOOK! It is, however, a very interesting Sci-Fi tale with extremely interesting world-building and a strong female protagonist. I feel like this book is pretty singular in NOT having a big romance arc.
Basically the main character is a space ship wreck diver, and the peril with which she infuses the dive sequences is more than worth the price of admission here. Haven't seen this much tension infused in a scene the same way since I saw The Abyss for the first time, just GREAT tension. I also loved the main character because she is paranoid and OCD and...er, I empathized and congratulated her on her paranoia/thoroughness a lot, haha.
This book is a BIT strange because it feels like two novellas strung together, and it might be the case that these started out as separate novellas, but they're linked together well enough to enjoy as a pair. Looking forward to reading the second.
One complaint, the Kindle edition is 9.99, and for an old book that seems pretty lamely expensive.
Basically the main character is a space ship wreck diver, and the peril with which she infuses the dive sequences is more than worth the price of admission here. Haven't seen this much tension infused in a scene the same way since I saw The Abyss for the first time, just GREAT tension. I also loved the main character because she is paranoid and OCD and...er, I empathized and congratulated her on her paranoia/thoroughness a lot, haha.
This book is a BIT strange because it feels like two novellas strung together, and it might be the case that these started out as separate novellas, but they're linked together well enough to enjoy as a pair. Looking forward to reading the second.
One complaint, the Kindle edition is 9.99, and for an old book that seems pretty lamely expensive.
December 7, 2014
I give this one good marks for capturing some of the illusion of the “right stuff” held by the heroes of classic sci fi portrayals of spacefarers. As revealed by Tom Wolfe in his account of the U.S. space race, the prototype is the test pilot Chuck Yeager, who was laconic, a self-reliant loner, brave in a matter of fact way, and a stickler for details. The lead character in this tale, known simply as Boss, fits this profile in a female form. In her first-person narrative told in present tense, we are immediately immersed in the suspense and thrills of her profession, which involves finding and investigating derelict space ships and then making money from their value as historical artifacts or as salvage.
The ship she has found turns out to be a craft from Earth several thousands of years old, before the time they had the capacity to travel to where it lies in interstellar space. Boss’ research leads her to infer that the ship is in the class of a military prototype believed to be an experiment in a dangerous form of stealth technology. She needs to pull in a team to do this form of archeology in a safe and competent way and do so in secret to avoid drawing competition from space pirates or interested governments. I loved the details of selecting and harnessing the different people needed for the team and the atmospherics of the space station city where she does her recruiting. In “diving” this first wreck, we get a fine sense of the dark claustrophobic spaces, unknown dangers, and excitement of discovery associated with marine divers exploring sunken ships.
When things go wrong and lives are lost, acrimony and blame begins to bring out the humanity of Boss, otherwise obscured behind her wall of her no-nonsense, obsessive approach to her work. The secrets behind her personality come out in a second part of the book. She is commissioned to explore the mysteries of the “Room of Lost Souls”, a place on a remote, abandoned planetary outpost where people disappear. The setting is where she lost her mother Boss was a girl, and the source of a permanent breach with her father. The exploration of this site had some of the same tension of the early scenes of the first “Alien” movie, but without the aliens, it loses some edge.
The third part of the book pulls all the sections together and rather abruptly sets Boss on a quest to carry us into the next books in the series. I am not happy with an element in the mystery that involves an implausibly genetic immunity to some of the adverse outcomes of human exposure to the stealth technology. But I am intrigued enough with Boss and her ways to want to continue with the saga. Other readers also encourage me to pursue her “Retrieval Artist” series, a set of sci fi mystery procedurals that involve the tracking down of humans guilty of crimes against aliens.
The ship she has found turns out to be a craft from Earth several thousands of years old, before the time they had the capacity to travel to where it lies in interstellar space. Boss’ research leads her to infer that the ship is in the class of a military prototype believed to be an experiment in a dangerous form of stealth technology. She needs to pull in a team to do this form of archeology in a safe and competent way and do so in secret to avoid drawing competition from space pirates or interested governments. I loved the details of selecting and harnessing the different people needed for the team and the atmospherics of the space station city where she does her recruiting. In “diving” this first wreck, we get a fine sense of the dark claustrophobic spaces, unknown dangers, and excitement of discovery associated with marine divers exploring sunken ships.
When things go wrong and lives are lost, acrimony and blame begins to bring out the humanity of Boss, otherwise obscured behind her wall of her no-nonsense, obsessive approach to her work. The secrets behind her personality come out in a second part of the book. She is commissioned to explore the mysteries of the “Room of Lost Souls”, a place on a remote, abandoned planetary outpost where people disappear. The setting is where she lost her mother Boss was a girl, and the source of a permanent breach with her father. The exploration of this site had some of the same tension of the early scenes of the first “Alien” movie, but without the aliens, it loses some edge.
The third part of the book pulls all the sections together and rather abruptly sets Boss on a quest to carry us into the next books in the series. I am not happy with an element in the mystery that involves an implausibly genetic immunity to some of the adverse outcomes of human exposure to the stealth technology. But I am intrigued enough with Boss and her ways to want to continue with the saga. Other readers also encourage me to pursue her “Retrieval Artist” series, a set of sci fi mystery procedurals that involve the tracking down of humans guilty of crimes against aliens.
December 3, 2009
I kinda like the movie Event Horizon, a supposedly horror movie about a missing ship. It has a pretty good cast. A couple British actors you know from Masterpiece or the Harry Potter movies, a couple of American actors you know from TV, Sam Neil, and Laurence Fishborne. It should have been a very good movie. The idea was good, a supposedly haunted or possessed spaceship. In fact, the movie was good until the writers decided they need to kill just about everyone off in really stupid ways. It's a movie where I watch the first half and then change the channel.
Diving into the Wreck got me thinking about Event Horizon because Wreck is what Horizon should have been.
It's a bit strange that I like Rusch as much as I do because I am more of fantasy fan. I like swords, not ray guns (I'm sure Freud would have something to say about this). I like magic, not hyper drives. It's why I like Star Wars more than Star Trek. Light sabers are funky swords. I first read Rusch when she started her Fey series, and then picked up her Retrieval Artist series. I think Rusch rights better SF than fantasy. Wreck is a good example of why.
It's not a perfect book to be sure. The major flaw is that some of the characters introduced at the middle/end of the novel are indistinguishable from each other. The pacing is good, however, and the atmosphere is perfect.
Rusch tells the story of Boss who dives wrecks of spaceships. Think ocean diver but in outer space. She finds an old spaceship that should not, cannot, be where it is, and with a crew, explores it. Then bad stuff happens.
Unlike Event Horizon, Rusch takes just the right time to build up to each bad thing. This isn't a slasher horror movie designed to get the highest, bloodiest body count. Rusch doesn't do this. One of Rusch's strengths is her ability to let characters go; she is not afraid to kill characters off. More importantly, though, she doesn't go for the slasher movie killing spree. The deaths have purpose. The deaths are felt. This more than anything helps keep the spooky feeling of the story. Because there is this sense of tension that runs the length of the novel, right at the beginning, because the reader knows something is going to go wrong. We know. It's like a horror movie. "No you bimbo, don't go there! NO, you twit! Take off your F**K m* shoes before trying to run away". That kind of knowing.
BUT . . .
Rusch does not fall into the cliche horror movie idiot character reaction trap. Her characters make mistakes. They make mistakes because they are human and, therefore, flawed like the rest of us. Additionally, she does not go "kill them all" attitude. She keeps the tension but rejects the stupidity.
It works very well.
It's true that perhaps the shockers aren't as shocking as they could be, but the book does raise the issue of how and when to wield power, of the rights and wrongs of testing. Additionally, Boss, the narrator, where likable is not super likable. In fact, you respect her before you like her. She is no where near a Mary Sue. The book might be a start of a series, but easily could also be a stand alone.
Diving into the Wreck got me thinking about Event Horizon because Wreck is what Horizon should have been.
It's a bit strange that I like Rusch as much as I do because I am more of fantasy fan. I like swords, not ray guns (I'm sure Freud would have something to say about this). I like magic, not hyper drives. It's why I like Star Wars more than Star Trek. Light sabers are funky swords. I first read Rusch when she started her Fey series, and then picked up her Retrieval Artist series. I think Rusch rights better SF than fantasy. Wreck is a good example of why.
It's not a perfect book to be sure. The major flaw is that some of the characters introduced at the middle/end of the novel are indistinguishable from each other. The pacing is good, however, and the atmosphere is perfect.
Rusch tells the story of Boss who dives wrecks of spaceships. Think ocean diver but in outer space. She finds an old spaceship that should not, cannot, be where it is, and with a crew, explores it. Then bad stuff happens.
Unlike Event Horizon, Rusch takes just the right time to build up to each bad thing. This isn't a slasher horror movie designed to get the highest, bloodiest body count. Rusch doesn't do this. One of Rusch's strengths is her ability to let characters go; she is not afraid to kill characters off. More importantly, though, she doesn't go for the slasher movie killing spree. The deaths have purpose. The deaths are felt. This more than anything helps keep the spooky feeling of the story. Because there is this sense of tension that runs the length of the novel, right at the beginning, because the reader knows something is going to go wrong. We know. It's like a horror movie. "No you bimbo, don't go there! NO, you twit! Take off your F**K m* shoes before trying to run away". That kind of knowing.
BUT . . .
Rusch does not fall into the cliche horror movie idiot character reaction trap. Her characters make mistakes. They make mistakes because they are human and, therefore, flawed like the rest of us. Additionally, she does not go "kill them all" attitude. She keeps the tension but rejects the stupidity.
It works very well.
It's true that perhaps the shockers aren't as shocking as they could be, but the book does raise the issue of how and when to wield power, of the rights and wrongs of testing. Additionally, Boss, the narrator, where likable is not super likable. In fact, you respect her before you like her. She is no where near a Mary Sue. The book might be a start of a series, but easily could also be a stand alone.
March 28, 2010
**3.5**
Diving into the Wreck is comprised of three novellas following a single character through a series of startling discoveries. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s writing style is very straight-forward and matter-of-fact. She’s efficient in her sentence structure, perfectly reflecting her narrator‘s methodical nature. Despite this lack of elaborate prose, she manages to convey the sense wonder with which her main character (named simply Boss) approaches her work. She's also adept at portraying the deep anger, guilt and renewed purpose felt when Boss experiences betrayal and loss.
Boss’ passion is historical wreck diving. She finds abandoned ships out in the blackness of space and pokes around to find out what was, and what could have been. She doesn’t scavenge--greed is not her motivator. Instead, it’s the quest for knowledge that drives her. More and more we learn that this quest is borne of survivor’s guilt and a need to discover the mysteries of her own past.
Apart from this passion, very few things seem to give her pleasure. She’s a loner, so removed from anything organic in a way that’s both hard to fathom and yet understandable given her experiences. Once we learn her story, it’s simple to see how this fixation occurred. We get brief glimpses into her past that show why she works so hard at remaining detached. We also realise that she’s not actually detached at all--she’s just very good at hiding her emotions from those around her.
Boss is complicated. The mysteries she stumbles into are doubly so. Diving into the Wreck, the first novella, details her discovery of the biggest find in several generations. It’s an ancient vessel with secrets that could destroy the current order of the galaxy. In the second, The Room of Lost Souls, she visits a legendary space station where countless people have vanished in their pursuit of forgiveness and understanding. The third, The Heart of the Machine, brings everything back full circle as Boss finds a new purpose in life--perhaps the purpose she was meant for all along. Through the intervening years, she’s found some answers and formulated even more questions. But the unknown doesn't matter anymore because she now has an ultimate, definable goal: revenge.
Overall, Boss is an intriguing narrator. She’s capable and careful, and inspires respect in others. Her various crew members seem to look at her as a mentor and a valued colleague even though they don’t always agree with her methods or her stubborn attitude. The world-building is subtle, with just enough to give us an overview of the political climate. There aren’t any cultural influences per se, but given Boss’ removal from society that’s acceptable. My only problem with Diving into the Wreck is that, despite it being an interesting storyline told in a straight-forward style, it does not skip along. This is not a tale of adrenaline and breathlessness. It is so matter-of-fact in its telling that I didn’t feel the “oh, my god” that would keep the momentum going, that would inspire me to devour the book in a matter of hours. This took me ages (in my terms) to finish because I felt the need to step back from the somber tone. I’m learning more and more that I need an infusion of ironic wit to keep me glued to the page. This book inspired a perpetually furrowed brow and good number of sighs. It’s so filled with helpless tension that I spent the whole book hunched and waiting for the next tragedy to occur, the next unavoidable death. It’s not “Will they survive?” It’s a case of “How many will they lose this time?”
All that said, the ending has the characters embarking on a new chapter in their lives--one that I wouldn’t mind reading should Rusch decide to follow them. If you like the bleakness portrayed in a lot of sci-fi sagas, the feeling that you’re just a speck in the universe and you can only do so much to affect your surroundings, then this one is for you. It reminds me of what happens before a rag-tag crew lead their rebellion against the evil Empire. It begs for a continuation of space opera proportions.
Diving into the Wreck is comprised of three novellas following a single character through a series of startling discoveries. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s writing style is very straight-forward and matter-of-fact. She’s efficient in her sentence structure, perfectly reflecting her narrator‘s methodical nature. Despite this lack of elaborate prose, she manages to convey the sense wonder with which her main character (named simply Boss) approaches her work. She's also adept at portraying the deep anger, guilt and renewed purpose felt when Boss experiences betrayal and loss.
Boss’ passion is historical wreck diving. She finds abandoned ships out in the blackness of space and pokes around to find out what was, and what could have been. She doesn’t scavenge--greed is not her motivator. Instead, it’s the quest for knowledge that drives her. More and more we learn that this quest is borne of survivor’s guilt and a need to discover the mysteries of her own past.
Apart from this passion, very few things seem to give her pleasure. She’s a loner, so removed from anything organic in a way that’s both hard to fathom and yet understandable given her experiences. Once we learn her story, it’s simple to see how this fixation occurred. We get brief glimpses into her past that show why she works so hard at remaining detached. We also realise that she’s not actually detached at all--she’s just very good at hiding her emotions from those around her.
Boss is complicated. The mysteries she stumbles into are doubly so. Diving into the Wreck, the first novella, details her discovery of the biggest find in several generations. It’s an ancient vessel with secrets that could destroy the current order of the galaxy. In the second, The Room of Lost Souls, she visits a legendary space station where countless people have vanished in their pursuit of forgiveness and understanding. The third, The Heart of the Machine, brings everything back full circle as Boss finds a new purpose in life--perhaps the purpose she was meant for all along. Through the intervening years, she’s found some answers and formulated even more questions. But the unknown doesn't matter anymore because she now has an ultimate, definable goal: revenge.
Overall, Boss is an intriguing narrator. She’s capable and careful, and inspires respect in others. Her various crew members seem to look at her as a mentor and a valued colleague even though they don’t always agree with her methods or her stubborn attitude. The world-building is subtle, with just enough to give us an overview of the political climate. There aren’t any cultural influences per se, but given Boss’ removal from society that’s acceptable. My only problem with Diving into the Wreck is that, despite it being an interesting storyline told in a straight-forward style, it does not skip along. This is not a tale of adrenaline and breathlessness. It is so matter-of-fact in its telling that I didn’t feel the “oh, my god” that would keep the momentum going, that would inspire me to devour the book in a matter of hours. This took me ages (in my terms) to finish because I felt the need to step back from the somber tone. I’m learning more and more that I need an infusion of ironic wit to keep me glued to the page. This book inspired a perpetually furrowed brow and good number of sighs. It’s so filled with helpless tension that I spent the whole book hunched and waiting for the next tragedy to occur, the next unavoidable death. It’s not “Will they survive?” It’s a case of “How many will they lose this time?”
All that said, the ending has the characters embarking on a new chapter in their lives--one that I wouldn’t mind reading should Rusch decide to follow them. If you like the bleakness portrayed in a lot of sci-fi sagas, the feeling that you’re just a speck in the universe and you can only do so much to affect your surroundings, then this one is for you. It reminds me of what happens before a rag-tag crew lead their rebellion against the evil Empire. It begs for a continuation of space opera proportions.
January 28, 2010
Have to say I was disappointed with this one. I love KKR's Retrieval Artist series of SF mystery novels.
Not sure if it was done on purpose for some obscure reason, but I was mildly irritated that our main character is never named and barely described. Even when she meets up with her father (after many years of separation), even when a total stranger seeks her out in a bar to do business, she is never named. The back of the book calls her "Boss", but that isn't her name, some of the crew she hires for dives call her 'boss' a few times, and that's it - even the ones she's known for 10+ years as well as the one who trained her to dive in the first place...
Entire book is narrated first person, present tense, which just didn't work with me on this one, although I've read some others recently which have (The Hunger Games, Tomorrow, When the War Began), both of which I enjoyed.
Plot is pretty slow and not really engaging. I find it hard to believe that 'wreck divers' as described (risk-takers who are adventurous and free spirits) would be so timid over every little thing that happens. Gets tiresome after a while. Lots of buildup to some very anti-climactic events.
Looks like a standalone book from the description, but we find out in the last couple of pages that the whole book is just a setup for a series.
Not sure if it was done on purpose for some obscure reason, but I was mildly irritated that our main character is never named and barely described. Even when she meets up with her father (after many years of separation), even when a total stranger seeks her out in a bar to do business, she is never named. The back of the book calls her "Boss", but that isn't her name, some of the crew she hires for dives call her 'boss' a few times, and that's it - even the ones she's known for 10+ years as well as the one who trained her to dive in the first place...
Entire book is narrated first person, present tense, which just didn't work with me on this one, although I've read some others recently which have (The Hunger Games, Tomorrow, When the War Began), both of which I enjoyed.
Plot is pretty slow and not really engaging. I find it hard to believe that 'wreck divers' as described (risk-takers who are adventurous and free spirits) would be so timid over every little thing that happens. Gets tiresome after a while. Lots of buildup to some very anti-climactic events.
Looks like a standalone book from the description, but we find out in the last couple of pages that the whole book is just a setup for a series.
Read
June 8, 2010This was one of those books that I wanted to be something else. I like tough heroines, but Boss was just so tough, so monotone and distant, often summarizing rather than interacting, that I gradually lost interest, especially when the diving scenes peeled off characters but didn't really seem to add up to much.
I was wildly curious about the room of lost souls, but as the mystery was solved, it became less and less interesting. Boss's family dynamic was probably the most intriguing bit of the novel, but I've seen that dynamic so many times, I finally finished the book without much reaction.
I was wildly curious about the room of lost souls, but as the mystery was solved, it became less and less interesting. Boss's family dynamic was probably the most intriguing bit of the novel, but I've seen that dynamic so many times, I finally finished the book without much reaction.
October 8, 2012
Two things prevented me from liking this one:
1) The technical details of space exploration seemed totally inaccurate. (Example: modern technology has allowed for 5 hour space walks without particular trouble, but future people seem to be limited to 2 hours. Modern space suits are made of Kevlar, which is very resistant to tears and relatively safe even for small tears, but future suits tear easily and even a pinprick can be fatal.) It seems to me the author wrote a book about deep sea diving, but then changed the setting to sci-fi. Regardless, the whole "how" of the story didn't work for me, because the technical details didn't make sense.
2) I couldn't get into the characters. They're described one way, but act another. In particular, they're very unprofessional. Everything is very emotional and personal with them, instead of being like something they do for a living. Maybe the whole thing would work if you assume the protagonist is actually incompetent and an unreliable narrator (making her a bad judge of character and a poor person to select a crew). Now that I think of it, I recommend reading it that way. I'm hoping the author intended that all along and I just didn't pick up the clues.
I'd be willing to give it 2 stars despite the above if there were some redeeming qualities, but I just don't see any. The whole thing is the characters and the details of wreck diving. Technically there's some mystery elements, but they were minor and not particularly satisfying.
1) The technical details of space exploration seemed totally inaccurate. (Example: modern technology has allowed for 5 hour space walks without particular trouble, but future people seem to be limited to 2 hours. Modern space suits are made of Kevlar, which is very resistant to tears and relatively safe even for small tears, but future suits tear easily and even a pinprick can be fatal.) It seems to me the author wrote a book about deep sea diving, but then changed the setting to sci-fi. Regardless, the whole "how" of the story didn't work for me, because the technical details didn't make sense.
2) I couldn't get into the characters. They're described one way, but act another. In particular, they're very unprofessional. Everything is very emotional and personal with them, instead of being like something they do for a living. Maybe the whole thing would work if you assume the protagonist is actually incompetent and an unreliable narrator (making her a bad judge of character and a poor person to select a crew). Now that I think of it, I recommend reading it that way. I'm hoping the author intended that all along and I just didn't pick up the clues.
I'd be willing to give it 2 stars despite the above if there were some redeeming qualities, but I just don't see any. The whole thing is the characters and the details of wreck diving. Technically there's some mystery elements, but they were minor and not particularly satisfying.
July 31, 2021
This is a science fiction adventure that reads like a ghost story. The heroine, usually referred to as “Boss”, makes her living “diving” on old spaceship wrecks, exploring the detritus of 5000 years of humanity out among the stars. She’s an odd bird. When she was a young child, her mother and her entered a place called “The Room of Lost Souls” on an abandoned space station and her mother never came out again. Her father abandoned her to her grandparents who were less than happy to be responsible for a grandchild who’s trauma had produced emotional issues. So Boss is very much a secretive loner making her living in a very dangerous line of work, bringing people around her only because it is necessary for safety in these dives.
The novel focuses on the consequences of finding a 5000 year old ship where it had no business being. It’s a ship with an abandoned military stealth technology that Boss’ nation is secretly trying to rediscover so it can pick up a stalled war with its major enemy. And that is the crux of the story. What is the stealth technology? How does it do what it does? And why does it horribly kill just about everyone who comes into contact with it—except Boss? Add in one of the galaxy’s worst fathers and a superrich businesswoman with her own set of daddy issues and you have a really exciting tale, yet none of that explains why this is a great story. I think that the novel succeeds not because of its fantastic plot and mystery, but because Rusch brilliantly creates the tone of an old fashioned ghost story to reveal layer by layer what is going on as she tries to pierce the mystery of The Room of Lost Souls that sits at the heart of the entire mystery. Where do people who enter the room go? And is there any way for Boss to find her mother again?
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
The novel focuses on the consequences of finding a 5000 year old ship where it had no business being. It’s a ship with an abandoned military stealth technology that Boss’ nation is secretly trying to rediscover so it can pick up a stalled war with its major enemy. And that is the crux of the story. What is the stealth technology? How does it do what it does? And why does it horribly kill just about everyone who comes into contact with it—except Boss? Add in one of the galaxy’s worst fathers and a superrich businesswoman with her own set of daddy issues and you have a really exciting tale, yet none of that explains why this is a great story. I think that the novel succeeds not because of its fantastic plot and mystery, but because Rusch brilliantly creates the tone of an old fashioned ghost story to reveal layer by layer what is going on as she tries to pierce the mystery of The Room of Lost Souls that sits at the heart of the entire mystery. Where do people who enter the room go? And is there any way for Boss to find her mother again?
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
April 9, 2010
While I have been an avid fantasy reader for most of my life, it’s only recently that I’ve begun reading science fiction, and those have been mostly older classics. But after reading a couple of interesting reviews of Kristine Rusch’s Diving into the Wreck, I decided that it was time to expand my horizons and try some more modern SF. I also have no experience with SF space adventures- I've never even watched a single episode of Star Track or any of the Star Wars films- so this was my opportunity to try some space adventuring as well.
Diving into the Wreck is divided into three sections, each of which reads like a short novella, but which build on each other to tell a single story. The first two parts were actually each previously published as separate short stories and each won Asimov’s Readers Choice Award for Best Novella.
Boss, as she is known to her friends and co-workers, is a professional wreck diver who spends her days exploring deep space in search of abandoned spaceships. These ancient discoveries are explored and studied and will often be turned over to museums for preservation or will become sites for tourists to visit. But each night Boss is tormented by nightmares of the day, almost forty years ago, when her mother disappeared into the Room of Lost Souls, leaving behind her young daughter.
Boss’s experiences have turned her into a solitary figure who prefers to live and work alone, except when she requires a team to help her investigate a newly discovered wreck. In the first part of the book, Boss comes across a lost ship, while returning from a salvage operation, which she excitedly tracks down. But when she reached the calculated location, Boss is shocked by her possible discovery and she rushes home to do some research and put together a diving team.
The story then follows the team’s preparations for the dive and the surprising discoveries that they make- discoveries that come at a severe cost to Boss and her team. In the following two sections, Boss, who is living with the repercussions of her earlier diving adventure, is given the opportunity to explore the place of her nightmares, where her mother had disappeared. But her explorations will uncover some unexpected answers that will lead Boss to take a stand against those who would use her discoveries for dangerous purposes.
Diving into the Wreck is an exciting, fast paced adventure that, once I started, I had a hard time putting down. I have never been deep sea diving, but Rusch’s vivid, and often eerie, descriptions of Boss’s dives into the depths of outer space, almost make me feel like I have.
I spend most of my time going over and over my equipment looking for flaws. Much as I want to dive this wreck—and I have since the first moment I saw her—I’m scared of the deep and the dark and the unknown. Those first few instances of weightlessness always catch me by surprise, always remind me that what I do is somehow unnatural….Descending into the hatch is trickier than it looks on the recordings. The edges are sharper; I have to be careful about where I put my hands. ...
Gravity isn’t there to pull at me. I can hear my own breathing, harsh and insistent, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have taken Squishy’s advice: a ten/ten/ten split on my first dive instead of a twenty/twenty/twenty. It takes less time to reach the wreck now; we get inside in nine minutes flat. I would’ve had time to do a bit of acclimatizing and to have a productive dive the next time.
Diving into the Wreck is focused largely on Boss, from whose perspective the story is told. She is a complex character who prefers to maintain her distance from others but is also watchful and protective of those in her care. Throughout the story, Boss’s character slowly evolves as she deals with the repercussions of tragic events from the past, and attempts to find a way to right some of those wrongs that she herself participated in.
While Boss is a character that readers can easily connect with, unfortunately the same can’t be said for most of the other characters, who were largely left on the sidelines. The reader is briefly told about the other members of Boss’s team, but I didn’t feel that I really got to know any of them. No personal interactions between the team members are described and no relationships seem to develop, which I thought was odd considering that they spent a substantial amount of time confined together on the ship. Even had Boss herself not participated, just recounting that such interactions occurred would have made the other characters seem more real. There were a couple of exceptions- characters who were fleshed out a bit more fully when the story required them- but I felt the story would have affected me a lot more intensely had I felt a deeper connection to more of the characters.
I also felt that the book lacked a clear explanation of what stealth technology is, which would have been appropriate considering that most of the events in the books were centered around it. While the ancient stealth technology is apparently very dangerous, I didn’t understand how it was different from the stealth technology that was currently in use. While I’m not one who requires extensive scientific explanations of complicated technology, just a bit more of an explanation would have been appreciated.
I will admit that I was surprised by how thoroughly engrossed I was by Diving into the Wreck and that it was a lot more readable and entertaining then I had expected. The events in the story, while taking place 5,000 years in the future, were still believable enough that I had no trouble following along, and I didn’t feel like I missed anything by not having before read space travel books. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a stronger cast of supporting characters, though perhaps in the sequel the rest of the team will get to share the spotlight.
Diving into the Wreck is divided into three sections, each of which reads like a short novella, but which build on each other to tell a single story. The first two parts were actually each previously published as separate short stories and each won Asimov’s Readers Choice Award for Best Novella.
Boss, as she is known to her friends and co-workers, is a professional wreck diver who spends her days exploring deep space in search of abandoned spaceships. These ancient discoveries are explored and studied and will often be turned over to museums for preservation or will become sites for tourists to visit. But each night Boss is tormented by nightmares of the day, almost forty years ago, when her mother disappeared into the Room of Lost Souls, leaving behind her young daughter.
Boss’s experiences have turned her into a solitary figure who prefers to live and work alone, except when she requires a team to help her investigate a newly discovered wreck. In the first part of the book, Boss comes across a lost ship, while returning from a salvage operation, which she excitedly tracks down. But when she reached the calculated location, Boss is shocked by her possible discovery and she rushes home to do some research and put together a diving team.
The story then follows the team’s preparations for the dive and the surprising discoveries that they make- discoveries that come at a severe cost to Boss and her team. In the following two sections, Boss, who is living with the repercussions of her earlier diving adventure, is given the opportunity to explore the place of her nightmares, where her mother had disappeared. But her explorations will uncover some unexpected answers that will lead Boss to take a stand against those who would use her discoveries for dangerous purposes.
Diving into the Wreck is an exciting, fast paced adventure that, once I started, I had a hard time putting down. I have never been deep sea diving, but Rusch’s vivid, and often eerie, descriptions of Boss’s dives into the depths of outer space, almost make me feel like I have.
I spend most of my time going over and over my equipment looking for flaws. Much as I want to dive this wreck—and I have since the first moment I saw her—I’m scared of the deep and the dark and the unknown. Those first few instances of weightlessness always catch me by surprise, always remind me that what I do is somehow unnatural….Descending into the hatch is trickier than it looks on the recordings. The edges are sharper; I have to be careful about where I put my hands. ...
Gravity isn’t there to pull at me. I can hear my own breathing, harsh and insistent, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have taken Squishy’s advice: a ten/ten/ten split on my first dive instead of a twenty/twenty/twenty. It takes less time to reach the wreck now; we get inside in nine minutes flat. I would’ve had time to do a bit of acclimatizing and to have a productive dive the next time.
Diving into the Wreck is focused largely on Boss, from whose perspective the story is told. She is a complex character who prefers to maintain her distance from others but is also watchful and protective of those in her care. Throughout the story, Boss’s character slowly evolves as she deals with the repercussions of tragic events from the past, and attempts to find a way to right some of those wrongs that she herself participated in.
While Boss is a character that readers can easily connect with, unfortunately the same can’t be said for most of the other characters, who were largely left on the sidelines. The reader is briefly told about the other members of Boss’s team, but I didn’t feel that I really got to know any of them. No personal interactions between the team members are described and no relationships seem to develop, which I thought was odd considering that they spent a substantial amount of time confined together on the ship. Even had Boss herself not participated, just recounting that such interactions occurred would have made the other characters seem more real. There were a couple of exceptions- characters who were fleshed out a bit more fully when the story required them- but I felt the story would have affected me a lot more intensely had I felt a deeper connection to more of the characters.
I also felt that the book lacked a clear explanation of what stealth technology is, which would have been appropriate considering that most of the events in the books were centered around it. While the ancient stealth technology is apparently very dangerous, I didn’t understand how it was different from the stealth technology that was currently in use. While I’m not one who requires extensive scientific explanations of complicated technology, just a bit more of an explanation would have been appreciated.
I will admit that I was surprised by how thoroughly engrossed I was by Diving into the Wreck and that it was a lot more readable and entertaining then I had expected. The events in the story, while taking place 5,000 years in the future, were still believable enough that I had no trouble following along, and I didn’t feel like I missed anything by not having before read space travel books. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a stronger cast of supporting characters, though perhaps in the sequel the rest of the team will get to share the spotlight.
January 15, 2010
Diving into the Wreck is a short but excellent science fiction novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who has also written extensively in fantasy, mystery and romance, and is the former editor of the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The main character of Diving into the Wreck, who goes by the name "Boss," is a specialist in the exploration of derelict space ships. Accompanied by a team of specialists, she goes into these abandoned vessels, in a process that is very similar to deep sea diving with all its careful preparation and inherent dangers. When Boss discovers a 5000 year old Earth ship that couldn't possibly be in the sector where she found it, a string of events is set in motion that leads back to some of her earliest memories, and will possibly have huge implications.
Boss is an extremely interesting character. She's a control freak (as evidenced by her nickname) and more than a little obsessed with privacy (see her ship's name, "Nobody's Business"). She's extremely good at what she does, and you quickly get the idea that being capable is more important to her than being liked. The traumatic childhood event that's described in the prologue still affects her every day. At first it seems disconnected from the book, but it comes back as the driving force of the entire novel.
Diving into the Wreck is told from a tight first person perspective, so everything — including Boss herself — is seen through Boss's eyes. As a result, some shocking events are at first described in her very cold-sounding, matter-of-fact tone — and only later we find out how strongly she was affected by them.
The novel is affected in other ways by this choice of narrator and perspective. Aside from the bare-bones prose style, we also only get the most basic information about the political set-up of the novel's universe, which involves a dominant Terran empire and a smaller breakaway group of independent planets, with the story firmly set on the side of that alliance of independent planets. After all, exposition is not on Boss's mind: this is her story, and Diving into the Wreck is more about Boss and her psychological growth than about the SF universe it inhabits.
Much like Adrienne Rich's poem of the same name, Diving into the Wreck uses diving as a metaphor for self-exploration and self-discovery. This may be a very personal interpretation, but the first person, present tense narrator frequently gave me the impression that the main character was narrating the events of the book under some form of therapeutic hypnosis, eyes closed, voice monotone, completely immersed in the experience.
However, this isn't just a psychological novel without SF underpinnings. Kristine Kathryn Rusch throws in enough world-building details to give the reader a basic idea of the political and historical background of her SF universe. There are a few intriguing chapters set on a military research planet that would probably merit an entire novel. I couldn't help thinking that someone like Peter F. Hamilton would have squeezed several thousand pages out of this universe. Not that this necessarily would result in a better work, but to be honest, I wanted more!
One issue I had with the novel: the side characters who accompany Boss on her dives are, for the most part, not very well defined. A few of them gain depth as the story progresses, but most are interchangeable figurines — which, possibly, they were in Boss's eyes, too.
At just under 250 pages, divided into short chapters, Diving into the Wreck is a fast and entertaining read that starts off as a deceptively straightforward story about shipwreck retrieval but quickly reveals additional psychological, political and ethical layers. This is one of those rare SF novels I'd recommend to people who usually don't read the genre: it's easily recognizable as science fiction, but it does much more with standard elements of the genre than you'd initially expect. Recommended.
(This review was also published on Fantasy Literature - www.fantasyliterature.com. Come check us out!)
The main character of Diving into the Wreck, who goes by the name "Boss," is a specialist in the exploration of derelict space ships. Accompanied by a team of specialists, she goes into these abandoned vessels, in a process that is very similar to deep sea diving with all its careful preparation and inherent dangers. When Boss discovers a 5000 year old Earth ship that couldn't possibly be in the sector where she found it, a string of events is set in motion that leads back to some of her earliest memories, and will possibly have huge implications.
Boss is an extremely interesting character. She's a control freak (as evidenced by her nickname) and more than a little obsessed with privacy (see her ship's name, "Nobody's Business"). She's extremely good at what she does, and you quickly get the idea that being capable is more important to her than being liked. The traumatic childhood event that's described in the prologue still affects her every day. At first it seems disconnected from the book, but it comes back as the driving force of the entire novel.
Diving into the Wreck is told from a tight first person perspective, so everything — including Boss herself — is seen through Boss's eyes. As a result, some shocking events are at first described in her very cold-sounding, matter-of-fact tone — and only later we find out how strongly she was affected by them.
The novel is affected in other ways by this choice of narrator and perspective. Aside from the bare-bones prose style, we also only get the most basic information about the political set-up of the novel's universe, which involves a dominant Terran empire and a smaller breakaway group of independent planets, with the story firmly set on the side of that alliance of independent planets. After all, exposition is not on Boss's mind: this is her story, and Diving into the Wreck is more about Boss and her psychological growth than about the SF universe it inhabits.
Much like Adrienne Rich's poem of the same name, Diving into the Wreck uses diving as a metaphor for self-exploration and self-discovery. This may be a very personal interpretation, but the first person, present tense narrator frequently gave me the impression that the main character was narrating the events of the book under some form of therapeutic hypnosis, eyes closed, voice monotone, completely immersed in the experience.
However, this isn't just a psychological novel without SF underpinnings. Kristine Kathryn Rusch throws in enough world-building details to give the reader a basic idea of the political and historical background of her SF universe. There are a few intriguing chapters set on a military research planet that would probably merit an entire novel. I couldn't help thinking that someone like Peter F. Hamilton would have squeezed several thousand pages out of this universe. Not that this necessarily would result in a better work, but to be honest, I wanted more!
One issue I had with the novel: the side characters who accompany Boss on her dives are, for the most part, not very well defined. A few of them gain depth as the story progresses, but most are interchangeable figurines — which, possibly, they were in Boss's eyes, too.
At just under 250 pages, divided into short chapters, Diving into the Wreck is a fast and entertaining read that starts off as a deceptively straightforward story about shipwreck retrieval but quickly reveals additional psychological, political and ethical layers. This is one of those rare SF novels I'd recommend to people who usually don't read the genre: it's easily recognizable as science fiction, but it does much more with standard elements of the genre than you'd initially expect. Recommended.
(This review was also published on Fantasy Literature - www.fantasyliterature.com. Come check us out!)
May 1, 2024
Diving into the Wreck (Diving Universe #1) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a sci-fi thriller I just happened to stumble upon at a thrift shop. I hadn't heard of it at all, but I'm so glad I decided to take a chance on it. It hit most all of the right notes for me. I only wish it flowed together a little more as it definitely feels like it's a couple of novellas fit together. That said, I need to read the rest of this series asap.
September 19, 2015
Boss is a loner - she seeks out old ships to dive, not to loot, but for its historical value. She also prefers her own company and doesn't really interact with people or have any friends. When she finds a space ship that is five thousand years old, human made and shouldn't be in this sector of space, she groups together a team to help her explore the ship.
Her interactions with her crew are somewhat cold and matter-of-fact, as is her narration. There's no warmth or show of emotion, to her fellow crew mates or to the reader. But Boss is not hard, just closed off and as we read further the prologue becomes clearer and we get to understand why she is the way she is.
There is no real build up to the story as it jumps in straight away into the action and Boss finding the ship. But we soon realise that this isn't the primary story but the lead up to it. As the story progresses from finding the ship to being hired to find a man who has been lost a place called The Room of Lost Souls, it becomes apparent that this is a personal story, Boss's story and it becomes a personal mission and not just about the exploration of an historical ship or finding The Room.
The story picks up pace about half way through and becomes exciting as Boss learns about The Room of Lost Souls where she last saw her mother alive. She begins to offer glimpses into her past, her pain, her mother's death and her strained relationship with her father and we get to see this more as she is reunited with him after years of ignoring his calls and messages. We begin to learn and understand why she is such a loner and so private. But as we get to know her so do the other characters in the book. She opens up more, shows emotion, especially with the deaths of her friends.
Boss is a complex character and although there is not a huge amount of dialogue in the book we get the feeling of so much history, so much has gone on in her life that she is an immensely interesting character and I enjoyed getting to know her very much. I wish there was a sequel to this book so I could keep up with her life and get to know her more.
The story is great too and if you are new to science fiction a great book to start as the sci-fi jargon is kept to a minimum and all scientific explanations are easy to follow. I enjoyed the descriptions of Boss's world in space. I must admit the ending surprised me a little - to end with a 'if you can't beat them join them' attitude was quite a change in direction and I felt went against Boss's whole character. However, It didn't ruin my enjoyment of the book and I wasn't disappointed.
Verdict:
I found Diving into the Wreck to be an exciting and thoroughly enjoyable read. For me my favourite part was pealing away the layers of Boss's personality. If you enjoy a strong, complex heroine and an exciting plot, then this is definitely the book for you. I will certainly be checking out Rusch's back catalogue.
Her interactions with her crew are somewhat cold and matter-of-fact, as is her narration. There's no warmth or show of emotion, to her fellow crew mates or to the reader. But Boss is not hard, just closed off and as we read further the prologue becomes clearer and we get to understand why she is the way she is.
There is no real build up to the story as it jumps in straight away into the action and Boss finding the ship. But we soon realise that this isn't the primary story but the lead up to it. As the story progresses from finding the ship to being hired to find a man who has been lost a place called The Room of Lost Souls, it becomes apparent that this is a personal story, Boss's story and it becomes a personal mission and not just about the exploration of an historical ship or finding The Room.
The story picks up pace about half way through and becomes exciting as Boss learns about The Room of Lost Souls where she last saw her mother alive. She begins to offer glimpses into her past, her pain, her mother's death and her strained relationship with her father and we get to see this more as she is reunited with him after years of ignoring his calls and messages. We begin to learn and understand why she is such a loner and so private. But as we get to know her so do the other characters in the book. She opens up more, shows emotion, especially with the deaths of her friends.
Boss is a complex character and although there is not a huge amount of dialogue in the book we get the feeling of so much history, so much has gone on in her life that she is an immensely interesting character and I enjoyed getting to know her very much. I wish there was a sequel to this book so I could keep up with her life and get to know her more.
The story is great too and if you are new to science fiction a great book to start as the sci-fi jargon is kept to a minimum and all scientific explanations are easy to follow. I enjoyed the descriptions of Boss's world in space. I must admit the ending surprised me a little - to end with a 'if you can't beat them join them' attitude was quite a change in direction and I felt went against Boss's whole character. However, It didn't ruin my enjoyment of the book and I wasn't disappointed.
Verdict:
I found Diving into the Wreck to be an exciting and thoroughly enjoyable read. For me my favourite part was pealing away the layers of Boss's personality. If you enjoy a strong, complex heroine and an exciting plot, then this is definitely the book for you. I will certainly be checking out Rusch's back catalogue.
February 7, 2013
Superb stuff and a very seductive beginning to a trilogy. It's been around a while but it is a fine piece of work by a very prolific (several pseudonyms) author. The lead character is a woman of few words, some complexity and infinite intrigue. Rusch's manner of taking us through the on-going self-doubt, self-confidence and self-discovery of this lead character is intriguing, well-written, and, for me, irresistible.
This is a space opera, set far in the future and far away from earth. All of the science is believable and what is of particular interest to me is the notion that after 5 millennia, humans/humanoids have forgotten more of the technology that has been developed than they currently know and utilize. Rusch's character is a "diver". She explores wrecks in space, usually for historical interest, but is not immune to making some money from it. In this opening salvo, she discovers stealth technology that is from Earth of five thousand years past. It is a complete mystery as to how the ship got there. The ship is dangerous, lethally so, to those without a certain genetic marker, which she happens to have.
The story goes on to bring us to meet "Boss"'s father and we learn of how her mother died as a result of this mysterious technology.
Rusch's writing is very appealing; she draws the reader in slowly, developing characters with brevity yet depth. There is a certain terse, tell you what you need to know style here that I find very attractive.
I already own the other two books in the trilogy and will be at them in the coming months. This is not new stuff, but it is great, recent, if you will, wine. Drink deeply.
This is a space opera, set far in the future and far away from earth. All of the science is believable and what is of particular interest to me is the notion that after 5 millennia, humans/humanoids have forgotten more of the technology that has been developed than they currently know and utilize. Rusch's character is a "diver". She explores wrecks in space, usually for historical interest, but is not immune to making some money from it. In this opening salvo, she discovers stealth technology that is from Earth of five thousand years past. It is a complete mystery as to how the ship got there. The ship is dangerous, lethally so, to those without a certain genetic marker, which she happens to have.
The story goes on to bring us to meet "Boss"'s father and we learn of how her mother died as a result of this mysterious technology.
Rusch's writing is very appealing; she draws the reader in slowly, developing characters with brevity yet depth. There is a certain terse, tell you what you need to know style here that I find very attractive.
I already own the other two books in the trilogy and will be at them in the coming months. This is not new stuff, but it is great, recent, if you will, wine. Drink deeply.
March 29, 2012
Judging a book by it's cover...you have seen this kind of cover before, the babe in a skin tight suit in some space craft, the slanted font with red in a back to the future kind of style, hinting of a military sci fi kind of story. Well one could draw that conclusion with Diving the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I am glad to say that the book was much more than the cover presented, a novel in three parts with a interesting premise of space divers who salvage wrecks, it has that familiarity of suiting up and going in to the wreck. There was elements of dread and claustrophobia in the tight spaces of the dead ships, a nice element of history, the characters were touched upon but you got a good feel for the protagonists viewpoint. Parts of the story reminded me of Alastair Reynolds. A very enjoyable enjoyable read.
August 23, 2011
Very start-and-stop narration; hard to get into it since there was no flow--and lots of repetition of plot points (protagonist makes a decision, explains it to her crew who parrot it back to us/her; v trying). The author is going for the hard-boiled, first person narration, and only partly succeeds; it's hard-boiled, I guess, but it's also stuffed full of one- & two-dimensional characters whose motivations seem linked only to moving the plot forward. Hard-boiled characters can be inexplicable, but they aren't supposed to be flat--especially not in first person narration--and the 90-degree plot "turns" are not interesting or mysterious. I wasn't bored, exactly, but I wasn't engaged, either. Disappointing.
May 23, 2012
Kristine Kathryn Rusch's books fill a very specific niche in my reading--serious SF, a little bleak, with some fascinating explorations of alien mindsets. In this case, it's not so much aliens as humans she's exploring, but the central idea is that some humans can think and do things that might as well be alien to everyone else. This novel was constructed from two stories Rusch published in Asimov's, but you can't see the seams. (I think Rusch is a far better short story writer than novelist, and since she's an excellent novelist, you can just imagine how incredible her short fiction is. My point is that I feel she has such a handle on her stories that she understands how they might fit together and how they need to be joined.) The idea is that this woman--her name becomes Boss in the second and third sections, but it looks like just a title in the first, so I don't know what the deal is--leads teams of "divers" into wrecked and abandoned spaceships, just as 21st century explorers might search the ocean depths for treasure. Except Boss cares more about the historical sites, so when she comes across an impossible derelict, she can't pass up the opportunity. Unfortunately for her and her crew, there's something else on that ship that's been forgotten for five thousand years, and once they've found it, there's no way to hide it again.
I get seriously creeped out by underwater stories. You can't see far enough ahead of you, and all sorts of things could be lurking down there. This felt exactly like they were diving in an actual ocean; Rusch puts limitations on her technology that are a lot shorter than we usually see in SF, so the divers have barely an hour to explore on each trip, and getting stuck in a wreck can have deadly consequences. She also plays out the discovery of the ancient artifact (you thought it was an alien creature from what I wrote above, huh? That was on purpose) slowly, so the book also reads like a thriller, possibly by the bastard child of Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz. Despite the fact that they're dealing with a mysterious thing, it sometimes seems alive, probably because it has such terrifying powers.
There's a small problem with the transition between the first and second parts of the book, because the story in first section is self-contained, and the second seems to be about something entirely different. It takes a little while for the two stories to connect, but after they do, the transition, in retrospect, doesn't seem so abrupt. Most of what dissatisfied me about the book had to do with the ending. It's a little "rah rah let's all devote our lives to stamping out this evil" and sort of melodramatic. The book did a good job of establishing how serious a threat this technology could be and how hard it would be to stamp it out, so we didn't need Boss reflecting on how the quest was going to consume her whole life but she had to for the sake of humanity and her dead friends.
I'd recommend this book to readers who like their science fiction to fall somewhere between hard SF a la Niven and Pournelle and more character-driven SF like by Moon or possibly Bujold. Also to readers who like a bleak perspective on a future society; some of Rusch's stories could have been written by Thomas Hardy, if he'd lived a century later and didn't like Wessex so much.
I get seriously creeped out by underwater stories. You can't see far enough ahead of you, and all sorts of things could be lurking down there. This felt exactly like they were diving in an actual ocean; Rusch puts limitations on her technology that are a lot shorter than we usually see in SF, so the divers have barely an hour to explore on each trip, and getting stuck in a wreck can have deadly consequences. She also plays out the discovery of the ancient artifact (you thought it was an alien creature from what I wrote above, huh? That was on purpose) slowly, so the book also reads like a thriller, possibly by the bastard child of Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz. Despite the fact that they're dealing with a mysterious thing, it sometimes seems alive, probably because it has such terrifying powers.
There's a small problem with the transition between the first and second parts of the book, because the story in first section is self-contained, and the second seems to be about something entirely different. It takes a little while for the two stories to connect, but after they do, the transition, in retrospect, doesn't seem so abrupt. Most of what dissatisfied me about the book had to do with the ending. It's a little "rah rah let's all devote our lives to stamping out this evil" and sort of melodramatic. The book did a good job of establishing how serious a threat this technology could be and how hard it would be to stamp it out, so we didn't need Boss reflecting on how the quest was going to consume her whole life but she had to for the sake of humanity and her dead friends.
I'd recommend this book to readers who like their science fiction to fall somewhere between hard SF a la Niven and Pournelle and more character-driven SF like by Moon or possibly Bujold. Also to readers who like a bleak perspective on a future society; some of Rusch's stories could have been written by Thomas Hardy, if he'd lived a century later and didn't like Wessex so much.
April 13, 2012
What a Wreck of a Story
[CAUTION CONTAINS SPOILERS]
I've never read anything from this author before, however, the premise of this book really appealed to me. I found the mystique of diving into an ancient earth space vessel that leads to another dimension very intriguing. Especially since said vessel's technology dates backs before a time for its own potential to exist.
Unfortunately, this story didn't intrigued me as I had hoped. I was very disappointed with how the discovery of another dimension was handled. It was so blasé. They find a doorway to another dimension and instead of exploring it, they blow it up? What is the point? Nothing really became of the story. There was lack of a sense of adventure you expect to find with stories that concentrate on exploration of the unknown. There wasn't much action and the heroine spent most of her time thinking, researching books and databases, instead of exploring the final frontier.
I did manage to read this entire book, however, I do admit to skipping through the long-winded parts [which were many]. I gave this book one-star because it wasn't entirely all bad [and because Amazon doesn't allow you to rate a book ZERO stars]. There were a couple of dives that piqued my curiosity but like the rest of the story they all seem to fall flat.
I honestly don't feel like I'm missing out if I banish this series from my reading list. Basically I found this book a waste of my time and I will not be reading book 2 in this series. In addition, this book is way over priced; thank goodness I checked this book out from the library instead of buying it. What a waste of a potentially brilliant storyline.
[CAUTION CONTAINS SPOILERS]
I've never read anything from this author before, however, the premise of this book really appealed to me. I found the mystique of diving into an ancient earth space vessel that leads to another dimension very intriguing. Especially since said vessel's technology dates backs before a time for its own potential to exist.
Unfortunately, this story didn't intrigued me as I had hoped. I was very disappointed with how the discovery of another dimension was handled. It was so blasé. They find a doorway to another dimension and instead of exploring it, they blow it up? What is the point? Nothing really became of the story. There was lack of a sense of adventure you expect to find with stories that concentrate on exploration of the unknown. There wasn't much action and the heroine spent most of her time thinking, researching books and databases, instead of exploring the final frontier.
I did manage to read this entire book, however, I do admit to skipping through the long-winded parts [which were many]. I gave this book one-star because it wasn't entirely all bad [and because Amazon doesn't allow you to rate a book ZERO stars]. There were a couple of dives that piqued my curiosity but like the rest of the story they all seem to fall flat.
I honestly don't feel like I'm missing out if I banish this series from my reading list. Basically I found this book a waste of my time and I will not be reading book 2 in this series. In addition, this book is way over priced; thank goodness I checked this book out from the library instead of buying it. What a waste of a potentially brilliant storyline.
June 23, 2010
When I first saw the concept of the novel, I instantly fell in love with it: Wreck diving in space? Awesome!
But as I got into it, I found that while the story was good, the execution of it started putting me off. Not so much as to stop reading but enough where I stopped enjoying it.
My main issues with the novel are mostly related to the protagonist. Since it was a 1st person POV novel (not usually my favorite POV to be honest) we sent the entire time in her head and the problem with it was she began to annoy me greatly. It was very hard to relate to her and in some places I'd hoped that one of the other characters would smack her but they didn't.
Along with the annoying protagonist and her repetitive soliloquies the writing itself was a bit sparse and in some cases (especially the ending) it was a telling more than showing. In fact, the last chapter for me felt like a quick wrap up report written by the character and handed to me in order to setup the next book.
To be honest, while I love the concept and the diving scenes were well written, I don't think I can deal with being in this woman's head for another novel.
But as I got into it, I found that while the story was good, the execution of it started putting me off. Not so much as to stop reading but enough where I stopped enjoying it.
My main issues with the novel are mostly related to the protagonist. Since it was a 1st person POV novel (not usually my favorite POV to be honest) we sent the entire time in her head and the problem with it was she began to annoy me greatly. It was very hard to relate to her and in some places I'd hoped that one of the other characters would smack her but they didn't.
Along with the annoying protagonist and her repetitive soliloquies the writing itself was a bit sparse and in some cases (especially the ending) it was a telling more than showing. In fact, the last chapter for me felt like a quick wrap up report written by the character and handed to me in order to setup the next book.
To be honest, while I love the concept and the diving scenes were well written, I don't think I can deal with being in this woman's head for another novel.
August 14, 2016
Not my cup of tea. I found it boring. The author equated EVAs a little to literally to ocean dives for my taste, especially since this happens more than 5000 years in the future, when you'd think there'd be equipment with better than an hour's worth of O2. And if there was a situation-specific reason the suits had such a limited air supply, that would have been interesting to hear about. As it is, it feels like a failure of imagination to have FTL but such stupid suits. And since the main character is such a loner, very little time is spent getting to know the crew she assembles. So when shit goes down, it lacks emotional punch.
September 28, 2013
Really great ride-along story. Hit all my buttons, and aside from how lame it is not to give your protagonist a name, I really liked it.
Boss is a great strong female protagonist, so I might let the name slide.
There's a great poem that lends the book it's name-- it's in my progress updates if you're interested.
Boss is a great strong female protagonist, so I might let the name slide.
There's a great poem that lends the book it's name-- it's in my progress updates if you're interested.
September 12, 2015
I found this on a Good Reads list of space opera books. As I read it, I could not help thinking this was the science fiction equivalent of a cozy mystery: pure fluff devoid of all the things a fan enjoys about the genre. There really was no world building to speak of. The characters were incredibly weak and underdeveloped . The plot equally so.
April 19, 2020
Decent bit of far future / post fall of Earth sci fi, which is clearly cut and shut from some short stories / novellas, but nevertheless the tripartite structure that comes out of it is actually quite refreshing. Its a tiny window on a vast Universe and I am not sure how much I want that window opened, as the many follow-ups seem to do, even with the final third having muddy ethical issues around "ultimate weaponry" it has taken some dings on its clean lines. But an enjoyable read with a pleasantly dour lead character.
August 26, 2018
Interdimensional Mystery
A well-told tale of finding a mysterious ship containing interdimensional stealth technology.
The story flows smoothly, filled with tension, and the characters are believable. Interesting ethical questions concerning military technology and its usage are explored.
While this is first in the series, it stands alone, but offers a glimpse of future possible events.
I very much enjoyed it.
A well-told tale of finding a mysterious ship containing interdimensional stealth technology.
The story flows smoothly, filled with tension, and the characters are believable. Interesting ethical questions concerning military technology and its usage are explored.
While this is first in the series, it stands alone, but offers a glimpse of future possible events.
I very much enjoyed it.
March 19, 2020
VERDICT: 3 stars; maybe 3.5 if I ignore the issues already noticed by other reviewers.
REVIEW: Unnamed protagonist & crew explore big derelict mystery spaceship; the plot thickens. Slow overall, but some tense moments.
DEMERITS FOR: Handwave tech, including unexplained FTL "jump" capability. And really:
SPACESHIPS? Yep.
ALIENS?
ROMANCE?
EVIL RELATIVES?
REVIEW: Unnamed protagonist & crew explore big derelict mystery spaceship; the plot thickens. Slow overall, but some tense moments.
DEMERITS FOR: Handwave tech, including unexplained FTL "jump" capability. And really:
SPACESHIPS? Yep.
ALIENS?
ROMANCE?
EVIL RELATIVES?
August 20, 2018
It appears like this is a set of three linked novellas -- I liked the first, but couldn't get into the second so gave up.
October 11, 2011
http://staffersmusings.blogspot.com/2...
Science fiction as a genre has always been based on what if. What if we brought a man back to life? What if we gave a computer control of a space station? What if robots had the ability to reason? Diving Into the Wreck is very much in this tradition, asking what happens when we start to forget technology? Kristine Kathryn Rusch's answer is: nothing good. Refreshingly old school, Wreck calls to mind the horrors of cramped space craft, the bleakness of space, and the depravity of human greed.
Boss loves to dive historical wrecks, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between stars. Sometimes she dives for salvage, but mostly she's a historian. Once she dives a ship, she either leaves it for others to find or starts selling guided tours. It's a good life for a loner, with more interest in history than the people who make it.
When she comes across an enormous spacecraft, incredibly old, and apparently Earth-made, she's determined to investigate. It's impossible for something built in the days before FTL travel to have journeyed so far from Earth. Boss hires a group of divers to explore the wreck with her, but some secrets are best kept hidden, and the past won't give up its treasures without exacting a price.
Diving in space is a lot like diving in the ocean. Instead of being worried about something snagging the air hose or running into a shark, sharp edges and nebulous ancient stealth technology are the fear du jour. Rusch does a brilliant job of communicating the claustrophobia and paranoia that seem inimical to creeping through a derelict space craft far from any safe haven. Stealth tech is the macguffin, a lost technology that promises untold wealth and power to the person(s) who can bring it back, that promises a horrible death to anyone who comes in contact with it.
The most charming aspect of the novel for me was the author's commitment to wreck diving. Not the plot, but rather the nuts and bolts of the profession. She considers all the pitfalls and realities of the job - what kind of person Boss would have to be, how she would make a living, and why she would put herself through it all. By the end of the novel nothing in Wreck lacked authenticity. So much so that if I didn't know the novel was set in the future I might find myself looking in the yellow pages for wreck divers.... you know, if I had to venture into deep space to recover something.
The novel is divided into three parts corresponding to the two novellas and a third part that weaves them together. Taken on their own the first two parts are incredibly dynamic with pace, tension, and all the hallmarks of great science fiction. It's unfortunate then that the connection of the two comes off a bit disjointed as though they weren't necessarily written with each other in mind. This is pervasive throughout the novel where in order to tie the two novellas into a connected arc with a shared conclusion Boss spends a great deal of time talking, and talking, and talking to members of her team. While these scenes are excellent opportunities to character build, and believe me the characters are tremendous, they leave quite a bit to be desired when it comes to pace.
Told entirely in the first person, Wreck is very introspective . Boss spends a great deal of time humming and hawing her motivations in the midst of coming to grips with relationship to her father. This deep introspection combined with the need to tie together the disparate story modules led to an unfortunate lack of world building. Although not entirely necessary for the kind of story Rusch was telling the world itself is very bare bones. I never got a great feel for the 'space' her lush characters were inhabiting and I'm not sure if the final product wasn't a little harmed as a result.
Nevertheless, Diving Into the Wreck is a worthwhile investment of reading resources. Although the novel as a whole has some hiccups with an overly tidy ending there are parts here that hold up against the best science fiction on the market. City of Ruins, Rusch's sequel, was released in May of this year. I've already got a copy on my bedside table and look forward to getting to it soon. I'm very confident that lacking the need to integrate two novellas into a larger arc City of Ruins can only improve over a very solid first installment.
Science fiction as a genre has always been based on what if. What if we brought a man back to life? What if we gave a computer control of a space station? What if robots had the ability to reason? Diving Into the Wreck is very much in this tradition, asking what happens when we start to forget technology? Kristine Kathryn Rusch's answer is: nothing good. Refreshingly old school, Wreck calls to mind the horrors of cramped space craft, the bleakness of space, and the depravity of human greed.
Boss loves to dive historical wrecks, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between stars. Sometimes she dives for salvage, but mostly she's a historian. Once she dives a ship, she either leaves it for others to find or starts selling guided tours. It's a good life for a loner, with more interest in history than the people who make it.
When she comes across an enormous spacecraft, incredibly old, and apparently Earth-made, she's determined to investigate. It's impossible for something built in the days before FTL travel to have journeyed so far from Earth. Boss hires a group of divers to explore the wreck with her, but some secrets are best kept hidden, and the past won't give up its treasures without exacting a price.
Diving in space is a lot like diving in the ocean. Instead of being worried about something snagging the air hose or running into a shark, sharp edges and nebulous ancient stealth technology are the fear du jour. Rusch does a brilliant job of communicating the claustrophobia and paranoia that seem inimical to creeping through a derelict space craft far from any safe haven. Stealth tech is the macguffin, a lost technology that promises untold wealth and power to the person(s) who can bring it back, that promises a horrible death to anyone who comes in contact with it.
The most charming aspect of the novel for me was the author's commitment to wreck diving. Not the plot, but rather the nuts and bolts of the profession. She considers all the pitfalls and realities of the job - what kind of person Boss would have to be, how she would make a living, and why she would put herself through it all. By the end of the novel nothing in Wreck lacked authenticity. So much so that if I didn't know the novel was set in the future I might find myself looking in the yellow pages for wreck divers.... you know, if I had to venture into deep space to recover something.
The novel is divided into three parts corresponding to the two novellas and a third part that weaves them together. Taken on their own the first two parts are incredibly dynamic with pace, tension, and all the hallmarks of great science fiction. It's unfortunate then that the connection of the two comes off a bit disjointed as though they weren't necessarily written with each other in mind. This is pervasive throughout the novel where in order to tie the two novellas into a connected arc with a shared conclusion Boss spends a great deal of time talking, and talking, and talking to members of her team. While these scenes are excellent opportunities to character build, and believe me the characters are tremendous, they leave quite a bit to be desired when it comes to pace.
Told entirely in the first person, Wreck is very introspective . Boss spends a great deal of time humming and hawing her motivations in the midst of coming to grips with relationship to her father. This deep introspection combined with the need to tie together the disparate story modules led to an unfortunate lack of world building. Although not entirely necessary for the kind of story Rusch was telling the world itself is very bare bones. I never got a great feel for the 'space' her lush characters were inhabiting and I'm not sure if the final product wasn't a little harmed as a result.
Nevertheless, Diving Into the Wreck is a worthwhile investment of reading resources. Although the novel as a whole has some hiccups with an overly tidy ending there are parts here that hold up against the best science fiction on the market. City of Ruins, Rusch's sequel, was released in May of this year. I've already got a copy on my bedside table and look forward to getting to it soon. I'm very confident that lacking the need to integrate two novellas into a larger arc City of Ruins can only improve over a very solid first installment.
April 12, 2019
This fix-up novel makes for a pleasant read. The characters are vivid and the story imaginative. Kristine Kathryn Rusch created an appealing universe with her Diving series. She as always paints clear pictures without expanding too many words.
December 29, 2009
I won’t lie, this is precisely the kind of book for me. I love derelict spaceships. It also so happens I love science fiction that incorporates both historical and mysterious elements. The discovery of ancient alien civilizations, the uncovering of here-to-fore unknown knowledge, and the recovery of lost technological wonders are all elements of story that I get consistently excited about. In a sense Diving Into the Wreck manages to cover all those bases (well, the “alien” bit requires a bit of sideways thinking) with a certain deft aplomb and brevity that is at once immanently readable and, unfortunately, occasionally disappointing.
The first thing I noticed is the almost anti-Faulknerian sentence and paragraph structure. Told in the first person perspective paragraphs rarely hit anything more then five sentences and more frequently are only one are two sentences in length. This gives the narrator, to my recollection given no other name but Boss, something of an odd voice. Though given her self-possessed predilection towards solitude the conversational tone and clipped narrative makes sense. It is really only distracting for the first couple of chapters after which I managed to adjust quite nicely.
The fast paced narrative structure segues into a fast-paced plot that pays only bare attention to Rusch’s world in favor of telling a fast action-packed tale instead. As a result Diving Into the Wreck doesn’t delve too deeply into the scientific aspects of Rusch’s world instead spending more time focusing on history and particularly history as pertains to both science and government. W hat we do learn of the of the universe that Rusch’s characters inhabit is almost exclusively limited to that which is necessary to advance the plot. We get glimpses of a recent planet spanning conflict that split the galaxy and are shown an uneasy peace that now exists between the two aggressors but it is only enough information to underscore how the conflict and underlying tensions affect Boss and her decisions. Inevitably more time is spent on the titular wreck and its own history but even the revelations of its own origin deal explicitly with their implications to the plot on hand.
The novel is divided into three, mostly complete, interlocked stories that together form a cohesive narrative that examines the dangers of shining light into the darker aspects of history and asks whether or not some knowledge should remain buried under the detritus of the past. At the same time I occasionally found that the end of one of these sections occurred right after something really exciting happened and I found the change of narrative direction pulled me out of the story. Was never disoriented for long but the sudden changes felt a little rough. As with many first person narratives you never form any kind of tie with characters outside the narrator and Boss, not necessarily a social butterfly herself, means that other character’s motivations remain opaque throughout the whole of the story. Even Boss herself remains at an emotional arms length always her narration taking on at least some of the same businesslike tone and facade she presents to the other characters in the story.
The plot is thoroughly engrossing. Even before the connections between the first two sections of the novel become obvious you can’t but help being drawn in by the mysteries that show up and the enthusiasm Boss shows for uncovering the history behind them. Diving Into the Wreck shifts into high gear in its final third; the triumphs and tragedies from earlier in the novel converging into a satisfying, though somewhat bittersweet, ending. The ending of course is also a beginning and while all the loose ends are more or less tied up, we are left with the possibility of more in the future. While the distinct narrative voice of Diving Into the Wreck might not be right for some readers I found it a wonderfully engaging read that had me longing to be exploring the silent, frozen hallways of long abandoned spaceships right alongside Boss and her crew. I’ll be keeping an eye for for future work by Rusch that will hopefully further explore the universe glimpsed in Diving Into the Wreck. This is space adventure done right and I can’t wait for more.
The first thing I noticed is the almost anti-Faulknerian sentence and paragraph structure. Told in the first person perspective paragraphs rarely hit anything more then five sentences and more frequently are only one are two sentences in length. This gives the narrator, to my recollection given no other name but Boss, something of an odd voice. Though given her self-possessed predilection towards solitude the conversational tone and clipped narrative makes sense. It is really only distracting for the first couple of chapters after which I managed to adjust quite nicely.
The fast paced narrative structure segues into a fast-paced plot that pays only bare attention to Rusch’s world in favor of telling a fast action-packed tale instead. As a result Diving Into the Wreck doesn’t delve too deeply into the scientific aspects of Rusch’s world instead spending more time focusing on history and particularly history as pertains to both science and government. W hat we do learn of the of the universe that Rusch’s characters inhabit is almost exclusively limited to that which is necessary to advance the plot. We get glimpses of a recent planet spanning conflict that split the galaxy and are shown an uneasy peace that now exists between the two aggressors but it is only enough information to underscore how the conflict and underlying tensions affect Boss and her decisions. Inevitably more time is spent on the titular wreck and its own history but even the revelations of its own origin deal explicitly with their implications to the plot on hand.
The novel is divided into three, mostly complete, interlocked stories that together form a cohesive narrative that examines the dangers of shining light into the darker aspects of history and asks whether or not some knowledge should remain buried under the detritus of the past. At the same time I occasionally found that the end of one of these sections occurred right after something really exciting happened and I found the change of narrative direction pulled me out of the story. Was never disoriented for long but the sudden changes felt a little rough. As with many first person narratives you never form any kind of tie with characters outside the narrator and Boss, not necessarily a social butterfly herself, means that other character’s motivations remain opaque throughout the whole of the story. Even Boss herself remains at an emotional arms length always her narration taking on at least some of the same businesslike tone and facade she presents to the other characters in the story.
The plot is thoroughly engrossing. Even before the connections between the first two sections of the novel become obvious you can’t but help being drawn in by the mysteries that show up and the enthusiasm Boss shows for uncovering the history behind them. Diving Into the Wreck shifts into high gear in its final third; the triumphs and tragedies from earlier in the novel converging into a satisfying, though somewhat bittersweet, ending. The ending of course is also a beginning and while all the loose ends are more or less tied up, we are left with the possibility of more in the future. While the distinct narrative voice of Diving Into the Wreck might not be right for some readers I found it a wonderfully engaging read that had me longing to be exploring the silent, frozen hallways of long abandoned spaceships right alongside Boss and her crew. I’ll be keeping an eye for for future work by Rusch that will hopefully further explore the universe glimpsed in Diving Into the Wreck. This is space adventure done right and I can’t wait for more.
November 12, 2018
Another entry in the SF sub-genre of a far future salvage crews finding weirdness in the vacuum of space. Rusch is a competent writer in the vein of Heinlein or Niven. Her protagonist is a competent woman who battles galactic powers as she unravels a mystery with origens in the distant past of human history. This is a quick, fun read, with none of that "why did I waste my time on this" after taste that I experience with so much genre fiction.
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