Jim Cherry's Blog - Posts Tagged "speculative-fiction"

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The Year Before the End by Vidar Hokstad

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In the 22nd Century of Vidar Hokstad’s The Year Before the End, the moon, Mars, and the asteroids are colonized and being exploited for minerals. There’s political intrigue as Mars wants its independence while Earth struggles to maintain its colonies, and then there’s the Centauri, an alien civilization from Alpha Centauri that has discovered Earth and wants to include it in its trading network and has been sending information on technology in the form of gates to shorten the traveling time between the galaxies and for even shorter hops around the solar system. But are their intentions truly for trading purposes or is the technology they sent to set up the gates a prelude to an invasion? This is the universe that Captain Zara Ortega or Zo introduces us to. She and her crew of the Black Rain a transport ship that straddle the line between the legal and the illegal and she and the crew aren’t particular about which side of the line they fall. Zo is hired by a syndicate to retrieve proof that the Centauri’s intention is to invade all she and her crew have to do is steal from a safe in a space station that was formerly a military station with its replacement within shooting distance. That’s the only the beginning after that begins the betrayals and intrigues, and crosses and double crosses of who is whose side and is the “proof” of the Centauri’s intentions real.

I found the beginning of The Year Before the End a little slow moving. Hokstad is an advocate of hard science fiction and a lot of the physics of traveling in space and moving around in a ship and a space station are thoroughly explained. Zo’s crew are an interesting lot, the most intriguing character is Clarice who has been “enhanced” by having her biological eyes removed for artificial eyes that can see on different spectrums of light and with more field of vision. She may also have feelings for Zo and vice versa, it tries to build a sexual tension between the two that never seems to make it, there’s only really one scene that directly tackles the issue but I wished for more hints or clues throughout that would flesh out that tension, but Holstad is probably going to develop that relationship in subsequent books (this is book one of a promised six book series). Once the heist begins, the shooting starts and the revelations come about the crews political affiliations as well as the motives of the people who hired Zo and what their true alliances are the story moves quickly, each chapter short and punchy and leaves you a cliff hanger to end a night of reading or carry you on to the next chapter.

As mentioned this is the first book in a series of six and the end of The Year Before the End sets you up with the questions left open to Zo and the mission that lies ahead of her. I look forward to the next book of the series to see how things turn out.

Note: I was given a free copy of this book in return for an honest review. I think I’ve done so.




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