Zero Point

Star*Drive

by Richard Baker

Peter Sokolov is a bounty hunter and killer for hire. Geille Monashi, a brilliant data engineer, is his quarry. After Sokolov and Monashi encounter an alien derelict in the farthest reaches of space, they have only one chance to survive...

... they've got to trust each other.

Genres: Science Fiction

316 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 7, 1999

About the author

A best-selling author and award-winning game designer, Richard Baker is known for his novels in the Forgotten Realms setting and his work on the Dungeons & Dragons game. His Realms novels include Condemnation (book 3 of the War of the Spider Queen), the Last Mythal trilogy, and the Blades of the Moonsea trilogy. He is currently working on a new military-themed science fiction series centered on the character Sikander North; Valiant Dust, the first book in the new series, debuts in November 2017 from Tor Books.

A native of Ocean City, New Jersey, Rich graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 and went on to serve as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy. When he's not writing fantasy or science fiction, he works in game publishing. He's the founder of Sasquatch Game Studio, a small game company based in Auburn, Washington.

Rich currently resides in the Seattle area with his wife, Kim, and their daughters Alex and Hannah. His interests include gaming (naturally), history, hiking, racquetball, and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the 5th book set in the Star Drive universe, which is a RPG that has spawned several novels. It is however a stand alone novel and no knowledge of any of the other books or of the RPG are necessary. This book is a great example of Space Opera and was a very good read. In this one a bounty hunter is hired to find and bring back a woman who betrayed a major corporation. He finds her but also finds trouble when the head of a pirate band where she is holed up takes offense and chases him. He has to make a blind star jump and when he comes out in deep interstellar space he finds an seemingly abandoned alien ship. Suddenly he and the woman are being chased by several parties. Some want him. Some want the woman and they all want the technology to be found in the alien ship. Also the alien ship isn't as abandoned as it seems. I recommend this book to all fans of Space Opera.

[Tony Calder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zero Point is set in the Star*Drive universe used by the Alternity RPG. As a tie-in novel for a gaming system, it is much better than average, as a stand alone science fiction novel, its not bad. Rich Baker has his ups and downs as an author, but this is definitely on the up side. The pacing is quite good, and the characters are (mostly) pretty believable.

Not surprisingly for a gaming novel, a good knowledge of the game universe allows a reader to get more out of it, but the book does not rely too heavily upon that - good thing, as the game has been out of print for a decade :)

I thought that the story ended rather abruptly, and there are a lot of unanswered questions left at the end of the novel. Again, this is not really surprising for a gaming novel, as this can be used to generate sales of gaming sourcebooks.

Overall, a light, easy read.

[Dustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun read. It's tie-in fiction for the Star*Drive RPG setting, but I'm only vaguely familiar with the setting and I still found it enjoyable. The author does a good job of giving you enough info so you don't feel lost, and most of it didn't feel like it was info-dumping. It has a very "how convenient" twist at the beginning to jump-start a major section of the plot, but I've read a lot worse in my time, and it's pretty standard in the genre anyway.
If you're looking for a light sci-fi read with action, alien mysteries, a gratuitous sex scene, and cyborg laser fights you could do worse than giving this a read.

[Cristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book. Not entirely sure how the new aliens fit in with the rest of the Star Drive novels. There definitely should be a sequel to this.