Usually I don’t hate a book from the very first page but every now and then I learn something new about myself. Today I learned that I would rather attend a field study with my worst enemies than read this again.

Scroll down for conclusion ⬇️ ———————————- For such a beloved horror writer (according to his bio), this book was not it. The only thing the author has talent for is repeating words (e.g. “A twenty foot desk lay ahead. The desk was currently unmanned and a dozen more desks were”; or “that was the lack of blood. There was no blood”). I GET IT YOU LOVE EMPHASISING YOUR LIMITED VOCABULARY.

Surprisingly enough the word “people” is not in his primary school-like vocabulary, which our dear author showed by repeatedly saying “men and women”. I assume he tried very hard to not be sexist by letting us know that he is capable of using the word “women” even in sentences where “people” would suffice.

I want to meet Ian Rob Wright and ask him if he thinks he’s too smart for an editor. He obviously can’t decide by himself whether the ships dock in hangars or on clothes hangers. In any other case I would assume that the missing punctuation is a stylistic choice, but he is very inconsistent with it.

The writing itself is frankly utter horseshit. I haven’t seen such awkward sentences in a long time, and I used to correct ESL essays. The author doesn’t really bother describing anything. “The view was breathtaking”. Ok? What view? WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERS LOOKING AT?!

Listen, I get it. Writing is hard. I have written stuff of similar quality while I was in creative writing courses. I would definitely not be as harsh if this was a Wattpad story for example. But this a published book and the lack of care and the way the author assumes it’s hot shit is quite frankly embarrassing.

I very much hoped that the other reviews on PB were wrong about this novella being too focused on geopolitics, but I was mistaken. The very first page is geopolitics. This book, just over 100 pages long, is full of absolutely wild stereotypes. If you told me this was satire and not a horror book I would believe it.

It’s essentially this: Yayy here we have cheery Americans who are very chill under pressure (“damn Americans, always so brave”is a direct quote btw) and yayy these British people all admire the Americans and yayy these Russians went crazy and got executed 🤗 yayy here is one fat Chinese man that is in the book for two seconds but it is very important that you know he is fat and Chinese ✨ Yayyy here is a man (called Norman) of vague Eastern European origin that doesn’t know English grammar (speaks in sentences like: “I no know”) but somehow knows overly complicated words and phrases like “if you catch my drift”🤗 Yayyy all these people are very patriotic of course, because the future obviously can’t have different nations than we have now and obviously you are not allowed to not like your own country ✨ Like I would have thought the author is American based on his writing. I was not even expecting diversity in this book; the bar was in literal hell. Unfortunately Ian Wright is great at digging.

Honestly it makes me wonder if it ever occurs to space horror authors that other nations also exist; so far I have only seen America, the UK, Russia, China and in one case the Netherlands, but that was a video game.

The characters have one (and only) talent of stating or repeating what’s clearly obvious in an extremely awkward way, e.g. “That’s why we are here. Let’s find out what’s gone wrong so we can fix it”, “he’s wearing a warehouse uniform”, “we’re in a spot of bother” and many more. Clearly they are there so the author doesn’t have to bother with descriptions.

They are also freaking stupid for a rescue crew. Why would they rifle through maggots with no gloves? Why does it take so long for them to think and solve problems? Why would you clean yourself with bleach and call it the right idea?!?! Like no, dude, you won’t save yourself from an infection by “suffering a chemical burn” 🤡 I don’t believe that there is no alcohol on that giant ass ship for 2000+ people. They also get told repeatedly what’s going on and they still do not get it. It was a source of a lot of frustration for me; someone please give me a cookie for surviving this.

The MC is such a non-entity and only exists there to observe what’s going on around her. You could believe any other character was in fact the MC, but they also don’t have a solid enough presence. You might as well read about cardboard cutouts, seeing as it would honestly be more interesting.

I have never read stupider world building. You are telling me that android’s eyes are a weak point… because they are a weak point on a human? You are telling me that the future has Marines on a rescue crew in space?? Am I supposed to believe that there had apparently been a Texan-Mexican war in your flimsy world? An American state. had declared. war. on Mexico. Genuinely what? There is a lot of other bullshit that doesn’t make sense but I am not going to delve into it because I do not want to spend that much time on it.

MINOR SPOILERS, mostly non-specific and none for the ending

The plot is something 9-year-old me would think of. The crew goes on a rescue mission and finds out there has been an outbreak of a highly contagious disease. Instead of retreating and going back in protective gear, they continue on looking for the source bare-faced. By that point they’ve already touched infected people (who tried to tell them not to touch them) and bodies. Also no, they do not want to quarantine themselves at any point. They would rather doom everyone than calling back to base like “yeah, so there’s an infection, please help us deal with this safely” Turns out the infection is zombies. By the way, yes, even the zombies are “dead men and women”. I would assume that the author is allergic to the word people but the MC uses it five times in one paragraph, because they deem the word zombie offensive. At that point they start to call them people instead. Honestly I was rooting for the MC to die just so I could stop reading. There’s one woman that implies that she is a lesbian in a “very funny” scene where she turns down a man and is like I am more into the MC hahaha. Hahaha. Obviously lesbians are funny haha. Anyway, she is the first person to turn into a zombie. And the MC kills her. By bashing her head in with a fire extinguisher. They have guns. What amazing representation dear author. Also they keep being rude to Norman Guy of Vague Eastern European Descent (who is a civilian mind you) and expect him to help out and shoot things. He also gets called a coward for hiding. The plot of the last 40 pages is just absolute garbage and I am not even going to bother talking about it.

END OF SPOILERS

I am staying away from this author from now on. If his books were the only ones left in this world, I would go turn myself illiterate with one of Musk’s brainchip things.

Conlusion This book is a complete waste of time. Even Requiem was a better space horror books than this one, and that one was already pretty bad. I honestly hate-read it to see if it improves (it somehow managed to get worse every sentence I read) and give an accurate review.

Save your braincells (I feel like I don’t have any left) and your money. Go read something else.

Edit: Changed India to the Netherlands, since I was wrong about the video game