After the success of Christopher Pike’s Thirst series – an anthologized version of his earlier released The Last Vampire – many of his books are now being rereleased, bringing a whole new generation of readers to his books. The Season of Passage, originally released in 1992 and apparently written early on in his career during the seventies, is Pike’s take on a science fiction story of a manned mission to Mars and the horrors that can be found on a dead planet.

The year is 2004 and the United States is about to send its first manned mission to Mars. Up until now there have been only probes and landers which have sent back little information. The Russians sent their first manned spacecraft two years earlier, and after everything seemed to be going just fine, suddenly communication was lost, both from the men on the ground and the man in the orbiting ship above. As the NASA team is getting ready to launch up to the spaceship Nova to travel to Mars, the President arrives for a special announcement: their mission isn’t just to find out what happened to the cosmonauts, but when a photo is revealed of a mysterious footprint taken in front of one of the Mars landers just before it stopped working, and when the crew learns of the laser rifles that have been loaded on the ship, they know they might be expecting some alien company on the red planet.

Dr. Lauren Wagner, chief medical officer for the Nova, doesn’t know what to expect, but she’s just as scared as everyone else. She’s leaving behind a man she loves and a thirteen-year-old sister, Jennifer, who she’s very worried about. When they arrive on the planet things take a turn for the bizarre and insane right away as they find one of the cosmonauts alive on the planet . . . but that’s impossible; even if he had survived whatever happened to them, he wouldn’t have been able to continue living in these conditions. Also the Russian is incredibly pale, speaks little, and seems to have developed a penchant for drinking blood. Meanwhile back on Earth Jennifer is continuing down her spiral of depression, as she writes a fantasy story about Princess Chaneen, a goddess among the Asurians, and her fight to defeat an enemy and his army; somehow the story ties in with what is happening and has happened in the past on Mars.

Pike’s science fiction thriller definitely keeps the reader hooked with both the events in the book and the wonder of why this is all happening and what the actual story behind it is. As everything is revealed near the end, things take a turn for the farfetched and over the top, but overall The Season of Passage is a fun read from a good writer.

Originally written on April 10, 2011 ©Alex C. Telander.

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