Book Review: The World He Once Knew by Micah Castle
Title: The World He Once Knew
Author: Micah Castle
Release date: January 26th, 2024
I can’t recall how long ago, but at some point, Micah and I connected over on Twitter/X and I’ve been keen to see what he was going to release when he teased about a sci-fi/horror novella in the works. I learned more about his writing when he kindly appeared in my 3Q’s author interview series and when ‘The World He Once Knew’ was announced, I was all over it. Sci-fi/horror is such a phenomenal genre. There’s so much the writer can do and there’s always a heavy sense of dread throughout.
Once the cover was revealed and the synopsis shared, I was hooked. Look at this opening line of the synopsis – ‘Jay has been uploaded into a new body to investigate why the transporter ship Candlemass went dark fourteen days ago.’ WHAT!!! Hell yes!
What I liked: So, that line I just shared is EXACTLY what this story is about. In the future, the year 2700, humans are occupying the solar system and ships travel around, delivering everything. Jay had died, but now, new abilities, allow people to buy the souls of previously dead people to upload into robotic devices known as HUSKS, so that they can have them do things, such as what Jay has been hired to do – investigate a ship that mysteriously went dark.
Castle does a great job of setting the stage and giving us a lot of tech background of the ‘how’ without making it overwhelming. We don’t get pages and pages of engineering speech that details everything down to the smallest detail. No, we get a few summary paragraphs that had me completely understanding and away we went.
Once on the ship, Jay soon discovers an odd black sludge that seems to be creeping across the ship. Soon enough, Jay is fighting memories of his past life he shouldn’t have as well as dealing with the final words of the various crew members when he finds their memory cards.
Castle deftly amps up the chaos, confusion and we see Jay mentally spiral as he understands more and more about what is happening. But not everything, which Castle does a great job of keeping close to his chest.
Oh, and did I mention that the story is based around how much oxygen Jay has? Yup. That’s the common element we see often in ‘sci-fi exploration’ stories and that countdown completely ramps up the tension, especially when technical difficulties arise.
The ending was a great sleight-of-hand that did a wonderful job of making me gasp and say ‘son of a bitch’ out loud. That’s all I’ll say about that to ensure we stay spoiler free!
What I didn’t like: Now, I had a BLAST with this one, but I will say, even though Castle does a solid job of bringing us from A to B to C, if you’re looking for a sci-fi/horror story that rewrites the wheel about how the story is told, this might not be for you.
Why you should buy this: If I didn’t have a number of other books on the go, this would’ve been an easy, single sitting read. The writing, the story and the character of Jay specifically, were all compulsively engaging. I wanted to know, I wanted to see and I desperately wanted the reveal to come. Castle had me hooked and this one was great from start to finish.
5/5
