She is definitely the most fleshed out of all the characters in the book. Of all the characters in this book, the only one I felt connected to was Laura. How the heck did any of the minor antagonists in this book manage to pull off the crimes they commit without being caught?Įxplaining the hows or whys of anything seem to fall by the wayside in favor of furthering the action and body horror scenes. How did the nefarious eco-terrorist group, Pitch Dark, manage to survive for so long?Įven their motives for wanting to commit crimes against humanity's chances of survival aren't explained very well. This seems to get almost totally ignored until the last action sequence of the book, when I guess what is supposed to be an explanation is delivered, but totally unexplored and just left me with more questions than answers. What exactly happened to the ship in the first place that turned a fair chunk of its crew into monsters?

There are a number of plot holes caused by the fact that the story never takes the time to slow down and provide explanations. It's entertaining for sure, but there were some downsides to the story within all that momentum that I can't overlook. The plot movement never lets up until the end.Īlameda did a wonderful job infusing a story about death and despair aboard a derelict spaceship with a breath of life that I was honestly quite surprised by. The story begins with a bang immediately in chapter one, and is just relentless from that point on. If you love stories that have constant action, you'll likely really enjoy this. I just can't help feeling like it could have been something more, had it been given a bit more of a chance to develop. As a fan of horror and sci-fi blends in general, I know I'd appreciate this book for what it was. Even the premise is quite similar to the premise of the games: a destructive alien force sweeps through a space ship, twisting its inhabitants into terrifying monsters.

One of my favorite gaming series was Dead Space, which was a pulse-pounding, terrifying and atmospheric sci-fi horror game set aboard a space station in the throes of an unstoppable danger consuming the passengers trapped within its walls.Ĭoming across this book at the bookstore was a lot like coming across Dead Space again. I played them all, and still have a pretty sizable collection of games that my book collection has of course far surpassed. See this review and more like it on _īack in the springtime of my youth, when I still had time for hobbies outside of reading like video games, I was a rather big gamer.

Pitch dark by courtney alameda