I received this book from the tour organiser/the publisher in exchange of an honest review.

This is one of the books I was looking forward to so so so much this year! And so I was totally excited when I got the chance to review it! YAS! And after reading this book I can tell you that it definitely is a book I want to re-read sometime in the future. A bit of a slow start, but when it gets going… it goes. And there is no stopping.

“Water and air collide at the back of my throat, and i Have to work not to cough and spray pills everywhere. She’s one of them.”

Because yes, the opening to the book, the first part before they get to the Aurora… was very slow. It didn’t help that Voller was intolerable, and Claire was willing to commit suicide (suicide is not a topic I can read about). But as soon as they got to the Aurora. When they went on the ship, first Voller and Claire, and then the rest. Then it started. The questions. Why is everyone dead? Why does it seem like a hell happened here? And then slowly scary things happen. Boy, the writer sure knows how to write horror, because I was on the edge of my seat (or curling up very tight in bed).

“So, when my eyes first meet hers – the blank space where hers should be, where that strip of torn white sheet covers them instead- I freeze for that extra second, my brain trying to make sense of what I’m seeing with what I expected to see.”

It also didn’t help that Claire has a past. A quarantine gone wrong. Everyone dead. That Claire can see things. It makes things tricky. Because we are seeing the events through her eyes. Is what she is seeing truth, is she seeing the dead, or is it something else entirely? And that also made the book so good. It was scary as hell, but for a part of the book we just didn’t have a clue what was true and what was not true. As the story continues we do get a more clear grasp on it, especially when the others are also experiencing stuff. But still, is it a trick or not? I love unreliable narrator books~ Love figuring out the details and see what is true or not.

“But what I saw was real,” Lourdes says immediately. “I was there. I saw her.”

I absolutely loved the characters. Well, OK, most of the LINA crew. Voller was just a horrible character. I am sorry, but he was. Constantly ragging Claire. Constantly making remarks. Doing things that are stupid. And more. And of course the Verux guys can all go to hell as well. But I just adored Claire and loved learning more about her, about what makes her tick. I love that despite everything she tries her best for her crew. Lourdes was such a sweetheart! Nysus was so interesting, and I love how many connections he had and how he kept finding the right information for the situation they were in. From maps to small details. Then there is Kane. Ah, Kane. He was so charming and sweet. I loved how he was with Claire, and with that I don’t just mean the romance part but all the parts. He listened, he was there for her.

“Ahead of me, one of Montgomery’s team members jerks hard to the right, the light on the end of his weapon illuminating the darkened doorway. It’s empty, the door still firmly shut.
After a moment, his shoulders go up and down in a shrug. “…thought…. saw something.” His words come through patchy and faint.
One could blame it on nerves.
But I know better.
It’s starting.”

I loved that the book contained a now and a then. In the now we see Claire on Earth, locked up in a mental institution. She escaped the Aurora. But to what cost. In the Then parts she tells us the story of what happened. How they found the Aurora and how things went so horribly wrong. Eventually the Then stops as we get to the point of Claire losing her memories and mysteriously finding an escape pod and we move on with the Now. In which we see Claire (and Verux) going back to the Aurora. For many reasons from very dark and WTF to well that seems logical despite all the freaking danger. I was all with Claire, on the one hand let’s go back because maybe someone is still alive from her crew, on the other hand, fuck nope because that just screams bad idea! Those Now parts got REAL good when we got to the Aurora. Things immediately got spooky. People were getting creeped out. And a lot of other things happened. Things I loved like all the spookiness and scary stuff. Things I am still not sure about, like what actually caused all of the things to happen. I mean it is a pretty ingenious idea (but also very horrifying and WTF).. but I also had expected something much much grander. Something more supernatural.

“”But it lives up here.” He jabs at his temple with his finger. “Eating and chewing and devouring.””

The ending, the epilogue, it was just fab and it made me smile! It was a great conclusion to the book. To everything that happened.

So all in all, I really loved this one! This was spooky and haunting. Scary and OMG NOPE. Sad, but also exciting. There were parts that were a bit too gore-filled for me (I mean, I really don’t need to read some descriptions). I would HIGHLY recommend this awesome book to all. It will scare the wits out of you.

2
T HE N

Sector K147, two months ago
I have a loose screw. Somewhere.
Amazing. We’ve been living on other planets and moons for a hundred years and visiting space for even longer than that, and still, a tiny piece of metal with misaligned grooves can fuck every- thing up.
“How’s it going out there, Kovalik?” Voller’s voice pierces the quiet of my helmet, drowning out the soft and soothing rush of ox- ygen. Somehow he’s louder out here than he is in person.
I ignore him.
“Kovalik,” he sings out my name. “Hellloooo?”
“It’s fine. Better if you’d shut up and let me concentrate.” I grab for the screwdriver dangling on a tool tether attached to my suit.
He sighs, the noise right on the edge of a petulant whine. “Lourdes says we’ve still got a wobble in the signal, TL. And we’re going to miss the rendezvous with the hauler if we don’t leave soon.” As if I’m unaware of those things as team lead. But then again, Voller excels at stating the obvious and being exceptionally annoying while doing so. After twenty-six months in close quar- ters, I’m ready to murder him for that as much as for the snoring that rumbles through the air vents into my quarters, keeping me awake. Unfortunately, he’s a good pilot.
I ignore him and focus on checking the beacon hardware, par- ticularly where we’ve merged new with old. Software updates can be uploaded via signal from anywhere, but hardware? Hardware is hands-on. And even with years of practice and gloves designed for delicate work, it takes concentration. Snap off a piece or lose too many screws and it’s a whole operation to get replacements all the way out here at the edge of the solar system.

Not that there are any replacements, as this is the last beacon. Not just for this tour or this sector, but the last last. For us, anyway. The next time the commweb—a network of beacons throughout the solar system designed to boost ship and colony transmissions for virtually instantaneous communication—needs an upgrade, a Verux SmarTech machine will be at the controls.
The machine will probably lose fewer screws.
But no need for commweb maintenance teams means no need for commweb maintenance team leads. No need for me.
This is it. The last time I’ ll be out here. Not just as TL, but forever.
No more peace and quiet of the vast emptiness. No more endless field of tiny stars surrounding me. No more ship with bright lights to beckon me back from the dark.
I shove that thought down. Way down.
Maybe it’s the receiver. I slide my hand along the metal support structure, pulling myself along to the other side, trying to avoid getting tangled in the process. My tethers to the beacon and our ship, a commweb sniffer called the L1N4—LINA—keep me from floating away but they’re also a pain in the ass.
I tighten up every screw I can find, and eventually, my comm channel crackles. “You got it, TL,” Lourdes, my comms specialist, says. Her husky voice is softer in my ear. “Cycling up now. Come back in from the cold.”
The gentle tug on the red LINA tether tells me that someone is at the cable controls, ready to reel me in on my signal. Probably Kane, my mech and second-in-command. He doesn’t like other people touching the mechanics of LINA, even something as sim- ple as a winch. Anything can break, he says. And repairs are lim- ited out here.
Not that that matters now. I’m fairly sure LINA will be scrapped once we’re done anyway. She was already old when I inherited her with this sector assignment. Battered, scratched up, smelling of overheated metal, with shitty airlock seals that are pretty much a full-time job to keep hard-foam-repairing even with Verux swapping them out for equally shitty replacements every time we finish a job.
But LINA is home.