Abyss Deep
Star Corpsman, Book #2
By Ian Douglas
ISBN# 9780062198099
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Sammy
Synopsis:
New York Times bestselling author Ian Douglas’s virtuosic Star Corpsman series proves one thing: The Marines are still the toughest sons of guns in the galaxy.
As Bravo Company defuses a hostage crisis on an orbiting mining station, Navy Corpsman Elliot “Doc” Carlyle not only saves the lives of a wounded Marine and two extraterrestrial friendlies—he averts a terrorist strike intended to kill billions. His reward? Deployment on a recon mission into the darkest depths known to man.
Abyss Deep is a foreboding ocean planet torn by extremes: boiling storm world on one side, unbroken glacier on the other. Humans established a research colony there to study the planet’s giant sea serpents—but the colony has gone ominously silent. When Carlyle’s team arrives, they discover a vessel belonging to a warlike alien species hovering above the atmosphere. But below the ice lurks a mystery so chilling it will make even Elliot Carlyle’s blood run cold. (Goodreads)
Review:
In a nutshell with a quote from the book:
“I then proceeded to explain . . . and hoped to hell I wasn’t making their eyes glaze over. I was afraid I’d already done that with the exotic ice table.”
Yes, this was throughout the whole book so much detail and information that it was difficult to follow the story. I found myself skipping to where there was dialog. The ice table is in the book and while very interesting, if I wanted to do some studying, it missed the mark and went into information dump territory.
As did the nano-technology information splurge in the beginning, unfortunately this continues with most everything in the story.
Now, I love this genre and my favorite book and author is David Gerrold with The War Against the Chtorr series, so it’s not that I’m unfamiliar with this genre or just not my thing. With that said this book did not hit any high spots for me, yes it has action and interesting aliens, but it’s lost in all the information. I gave this book 3 stars because the story was only okay for me, but the writing is strong as is all the research so I upped it to the 3 stars.
The parts I found most interesting were there, here is an example, Doc thinks:
“I became more convinced than ever that they’d cut up Kari out of ignorance, unable to tell the difference between Marine armor, her skinsuit utilities, and her skin.”
This could have been a really interesting read. That’s what I wanted more of, what I got was more protocol on who would go down and investigate the alien life form. Then it would catch my interest again for a bit and back to blah, blah, blah, I’m sure you get the picture by now and I need not harp.
Would I recommend this book? Yes, to folks who like to read about military protocol, nano-tech, types of ice etc….in massive detail. I must add I did not read the first book in this series so perhaps it might have added information or not (shoulder shrug).
