The Scourge Between Stars | Ness Brown

 

The Scourge Between Stars

Ness Brown

 

 

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Ness Brown's The Scourge Between Stars is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls.

As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears’ failed colony on a distant planet.

Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn's crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship’s Wards, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion.

Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship’s unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.

REVIEW

On the Good Ship Calypso, something is taking down the crew.

As a rag tag group of travellers make their way back to Earth after a failed attempt to colonise some star or other, Acting Captain Jacklyn Albright is attempting to get the colonisers back home, manage insurrection on the trip and also deal with with dwindling food stocks, an absentee captain (and father) and an unknown entity that happens to be killing off the crew.

Drawing heavily on sci - fi classics such as Alien and Event Horizon, The Scourge Between Stars is the publishing debut of Ness Brown.

Basically, the book is a survival horror in space, which the book does quite competently. The book is a solid debut, and at points it builds up the tension, particularly at the beginning of the story.

However, filled with largely forgettable characters, a derivative plot, a mish mash of good ideas that are never fully explored and an ending that relies on deus ex machina, The Scourge Between Stars was unfortunately largely forgettable.

It’s not that it is a bad book per se, it’s just that it is not a good book. It’s just……..alright.

Ultimately, whilst the book was a decent distraction, it doesn’t deliver on its promise of being a tense horror set in space.