Into the Black: Odyssey One, Book 1

A bit long-winded in some parts. Roughly 60-70% of the book was devoted to one extremely long battle. Some of it added nothing to the story. I found the parts with "Archangel Fighter Crafts" to be redundant, boring and non-productive. The fighter pilots were the least interesting characters in the book. After their 3rd deployment I began skipping any section they were in. Other than that I found the story to be quite enthralling. I especially liked how there was no "magic hand wave resolution." The conclusion was well developed and believable. I'd say I'm heading to buy the next in the series now but I've made that mistake too many times, now. I'm finding it to be a pattern in sci-fi... a great first offering to draw you in followed by increasingly poor subsequent entries. So, I'm off to read reviews of the next few books in the series.

Enjoyed the book and the audible narration was very well done for male characters. Story line had some good plot lines and the core characters were we developed. I enjoyed the story and will definitely get book 2. If you like old school military Space Opera you should like this book and the stories, it's written the way John Wayne would play a marine.

Currie claims he loves to write and it shows. This is a thick book and the sequel (due out this month) will surely be as lengthy.There is basically one story line here, and the majority of the book involves a battle in space between humans from Earth, humans from another, very distant star system, and large spider-like aliens called the Drasin. There's not a lot of explanation provided as to why the Drasin are out to destroy entire races or who or what they actually are. The author teases the reader near the end of the book, suggesting we'll find out more in the sequel (due out 9/12). He also neglects to explain how there happen to be humans identical to ourselves located in such a distant part of the galaxy. These unanswered questions bothered me to a certain extent, but by the time I was asking them, I'd gotten caught up in the story.Currie is good at character creation, giving each their individual personalities and quirks. The only "bad guys" in the story are the Drasin, whom we only know as an enemy that may be a race of spider-like creatures that reproduce by eating rock (and eventually entire planets they've conquered) or the pawns of some darker, more intelligent being or race. The Drasin do not communicate with those they are attacking, thus any character we get to know in the book is actually a "good" character; this is unusual but works in this instance.I'm not into military sci-fi, so I was surprised to find myself anxiously turning to each new page to find out what was going to happen next. There's a lot of military and scientific info necessary to make the story believable. It did bother me occasionally when it seemed the explanations went on too long, but it didn't stop me from continuing.All in all, I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It's not one I'd read a second time due mainly to the fact that there's not a lot of innovative aspects here apart from some very inventive weapons and space-travel capabilities; the author's transition drive that disintegrates then reintegrates the entire ship for fast than light speed travel is a provocative idea that I found believable (but wouldn't like to test due to the side-effects!).So what we are left with are likeable, believable characters, including far more females in top military and technical positions than usually found in sci-fi novels of this ilk, and a very long, drawn-out series of battles between the humans and the Drasin. This sounds boring, admittedly, but I had trouble putting the book down, in part due to the author's use of very short sub-chapters (often less than a page), as I kept telling myself I'd read just one more short bit before taking a break. I ended up reading the nearly 600 page volume in about 3 days!Will I read the sequel? I've already ordered it from Amazon Vine.One final point -- this is the "remastered edition", which deserves a short explanation. Some other reviewers explain the original edition was full of typos and this is the cleaned up version of that edition. Being an author myself, I couldn't help but count typos as I read. I only found 6 or 7 typos in the remastered edition, which is damn good for any book these days.I recommend this book and am anxious to see if, in the sequel, Currie provides the answers to important questions unanswered in the first book. If he can come up with creative, original answers, he will have a fine series going here. If he fails to produce such answers and the sequel is simply another tale of an epic battle in space, I doubt I would bother reading any more of the series. In the meantime, I'm anxious to see if he pulls it off! It won't be easy, but I wish Mr. Currie all the luck in the universe!

I ordered this book in Oct 2012, and verified that I had gotten the 'remastered' version. I don't remember how I first came upon this book, I think random stumbling around Amazon. No one I knew personally had read it before. The story blurb intrigued me, and even though I glanced over the reviews and saw all the negatives from the pre-rematered version…I went for it.I really REALLY wanted to like this book. A lot. A lot a lot. Seven out of five stars a lot. It's a great story. A space opera, on the order of Battlestar Galactica. But…there were some seriously unforgivable issues, errors and problems that have absolutely no business being in the story whatsoever, especially one remastered, that killed my star enthusiasm off.But first, the story, and the presentation.This space opera takes place in the 'near future'. While the author does not pin dates to events happening or have happened in the book relative to current time, the dialogue and some of the history presented through the eyes of the main(???) character suggest that it is "near future", so I'd imagine 100 years, but would give it 200 just to allow the author some leeway for technological development for the story..Initially I thought this book was going to be about Captain Eric Weston. But as the chapters accumulate, the storyline occasionally steps out to catch a glimpse into the lives of other characters for a moment. Pretty much just snippets, with no real depth or development. You find you want to know more about them, as much as you've learned about the Captain, but the story pulls you back to Weston. It stays primarily focused on Weston until the Odyssey arrives at the Fuielles star system. It is about 180 pages into a 579 page story that the reader is finally treated to a somewhat more even-handed spread of attention to the rest of the characters only glimpsed early on. But even then, there is a lot of character development missed out with most of the crew that had been presented. Some of them could have been left out wholesale and it would not have hurt the story any.One key thing missing from this novel is a listing of all the characters in the front for the reader to keep track of who's who. While this is done in some other books, both fiction and non, it wasn't done here, and would have been *very* helpful. So I sometimes found myself confused by who 'this' character is in various places in the storyline, especially since some are seen only infrequently in the early part of the book. I eventually resorted to keeping my own sheet of characters to refer to. As it is, having a character roster would have been a good early warning to the reader that this is not a book centered on one character (as it seems at times, especially early on) but about the crew of a starship (in which case a lot more character development would be/should be required for the more important characters in the story).While out on a shakedown cruise the Odyssey picks up an unusual tachyon signal and decides to go off and investigate. They discover the remnants of a space battle, and a survivor of an alien human race. They then go to take her to one of her colony worlds, only to find that it had been invaded and was being destroyed by a genocidal alien race known as the Drasin.The Odyssey ends up getting into a pitched battle with the Drasin. The Odyssey and crew are almost destroyed, but manage to escape with most of the ship intact, and defeat the Drasin ship. However, the planet is totally infested; it is too late to save it. While millions had been killed, the Odyssey does manage to rescue 500 survivors, and head off to the main Ranquil (or Ranqil, depending on which one of those names is a typo) planet and the rest of the alien human race that the Drasin are bent on eliminating from the Universe. There they get into another pitched battle, but a key Drasin weapon that the Odyssey experienced in a *very* debilitating manner in their first battle, and shown in a flashback scene from the alien humans, (a weapon in which the Drasin draw the very life force and ship energies from the target vessel and use it to insta-repair themselves) is never, ever, EVER seen - or even MENTIONED - again. What weapon was that? Why did the Drasin stop using it?? What the heck?!?Technical issues. It is unfortunate that the author does not seem to have a real grasp and understanding of astronomy, as he seems to toss out terms that sound 'cool' without really understanding what they truly mean (Evan needs an astro science advisor!). So many of these technical details are so very easily verified or cross-checkable on the internet that they are unforgivable gaffs in the storyline. (unless the author was taking a page from the Star Trek universe, where story and character continuity does not even exist between episodes, and the ST producers are quite fine with that (I once heard them mention this at a convention), but I really don't want to tag the author in such a negative light)Example of verifiable information: The star system Alpha Centauri, one of the nearest star systems to our own, is noted as being 4.5 light years away. It is actually 4.3 light years away. It is not going to move 0.2 light years in the space of a couple hundred years.After visiting Alpha Centauri, the Odyssey is drawn into an adventure to a "white giant about 28 light years from here" (with 'here' being at Alpha Centauri, which places the white giant star in question less than 33 light years from Earth). Alright, what white giants are within 33 light years of Earth? There are none. There are a few yellow subgiants (e.g., Delta Pavonis, Beta Hydri, mu Herculis), but no white giants. The closest giant star is Pollux at 33.7 light years distance, and it is an orange giant, not white.Okay, let's ignore that discrepancy for the moment, and assume the target star is indeed 28 light years from Alpha Centauri, in whatever direction it may lie relative to Earth. Which means at best it cannot be more than 28 + 4.3 light years away. Making it less than 33 light years distant to Earth.However, the story then states emphatically that the star system is "over forty-five light years from Earth" (wait, what?!?), and on the next page states even more specifically that the star system is 48 light years from Earth! Yet even later, Captain Weston discusses the various systems they have been to where the Drasin have attacked. And he notes that the first one (the white giant star above) as being 45 light years from Earth (wait, back to 45?? does the crew even have a grasp on where the heck they are in the universe at this point??). I don't want to tell the author what he was thinking, but the *perception* is, he didn't really care enough to keep these details intact and continuous. This is a huge, huge step away from "science fiction" and well into "science fantasy". Tell the story, yes, please, but you gotta keep the details in line.Now, this distance thing leads to another discontinuity in the story. We learn much later that the Odyssey's transition drive will take it just under 30 light years in one jump (this is specifically stated on page 563). Yet…they made it from Alpha Centauri to the white giant star in one jump of over 40 light years. Help?Okay, let's step away from this mysterious star. We've demonstrated that it doesn't really exist. and whether or not it is supposed to be a real star, that the author doesn't keep a careful accounting for detail in the story. Which is a pity. There are other technical problems which suggest the author doesn't know what reality is when it comes to space and astronomy, which again, is extremely unfortunate and mars the story.At several points along the journey the author mentions "Trojan" asteroids (sometimes referred to obliquely as 'the Trojans' or 'system Trojans'). As an example, early in the story the Odyssey jumps into aforementioned white giant star system and is immediately beset by a debris field of some kind. One of the bridge officers states to the Captain that they had "come in well clear of the system Trojans". I'm not sure what 'system Trojans' are supposed to be. In Real Life Astronomical Terms, a 'Trojan' is an asteroid or natural satellite/moon that shares an orbit with a planet or larger moon, but is located in the region of either the L4 or L5 Lagrange points (we'll address the Lagrange point issue later), which lie 60 degrees ahead or behind the larger body along the larger body's orbit. Which means, they are fairly *far* *away* from the planetary body with which they are associated. More discerningly, the ones at the L4 position are called "Greeks" and the ones at the L5 position are called "Trojans", and they are associated with the larger body with which they share an orbit. They are not 'system Trojans', not spread in some sort of 'asteroid belt' around the star system. Further, there are a lot of *other* asteroids scattered about the solar system not hanging out at either of these Lagrange points, and they are not called 'Trojans'.The navigator goes on to state (continuing with the above example) that he plotted the course to keep the ship safely away from any Lagrangian points. I don't understand what the author was trying to say here, nor am I certain if the author thought that "Lagrangian points" was a cool term to toss in, or if he does know what it is but didn't elaborate (through his characters) that the crew has a layout of the star system they are heading toward (after all it is only 33 or 45 or 48 light years from Earth; we have been detecting - heck, even *imaging* - planets around stars since 1995, when we first detected a planet around the star system 51 Pegasi, which lies 50.9 light years away, so it is WELL within the realm of possibility that this star system - assuming it's supposed to be a real star system - has been well studied by exoplanet astronomers back home). It seems an unnecessary complication to the story, and it might have been better if the Odyssey had just come in at some distance off the system's ecliptic plane. That would have kept system debris field encounters (i.e., asteroids and whatnot) down to a minimum.The heliopause. Apparently this is the point beyond which ships using the transition drive can engage it (and apparently where the alien ships - human and Drasin - can use their own, albeit slower, FTL drives). Okay, fine, I'll accept that. But the travel times to/from the heliopause in the story….don't quite add up.Taking our own system's heliopause as an example, it is approximately 123 Astronomical Units (123x the mean Earth-Sun distance) out from the Sun, or about 11 billion miles. Or about 16 light hours. At the end of the story the Odyssey returns to the Sol system, and one of the people who note it's return notes that it will take the Odyssey 3 days to travel in-bound. But the Odyssey's top speed it was stated earlier in the book is 2/3 c, or 2/3 the speed of light. It should only take a little over 27 hours to make the journey. In the other star systems that the Odyssey visited, it took far less time than that to get down into the system's planetary ring region. And these stars were larger than our own (the white giant is, by default, larger than a yellow dwarf, which is what our Sun is, and in the middle of a pitched battle between the Odyssey and the Drasin while trying to protect Milla's planet, it's noted that the star is a red giant, which is, again, far larger than our own Sun - so in both of those cases the heliopause will be *further* out from the respective stars than our own system's heliopause is to our Sun). Then why in these other systems did it take the Odyssey less than a day to get in-system (particularly in the last to protect the planet from the Drasin) and it's now taking 3 days for the Odyssey to get into our system? This is something Star Trek has been known to do, and is a huge disappointment, and insult to the intelligence of the viewers, that they (knowingly and willingly) do these kinds of things. I am hoping better from Evan.Odd story discontinuities are sprinkled throughout the book, and almost always deal with astronomy-related matters, space travel, and/or space combat (though less so in this topic than the other two). It's almost as if the author was rushing the words and ideas out while he was writing, and some stuff fell through the cracks. One example is when Milla, the alien woman (from the system of Ranquil) whom the crew of the Odyssey had rescued, was recounting her tale, of the battle her fleet was in with a genocidal bug-like alien race, the Drasin. Early in the battle, a single Drasin ship is being hit by the whole of the Ranquil fleet. It employs some sort of energy leeching technology on one of the damaged Ranquil ships, and is suddenly fully repaired (mentioned earlier in this review). Okay, I can totally buy that, sufficiently advanced tech can look like magic, after all. The Ranquil realize they are in for the fight of their lives when one of the bridge crew calls out "Captain, the incoming vessel is on an intercept course!" Ummmmmmm, what incoming vessel? This is the first time you hear that there is another ship coming to the battle. And it's said as if the captain is very aware that this second ship is out there, but this is the first time the reader has *any* clue about it. Anyway, the dialog continues with the captain inquiring who the vessel is, and the crewman indicating it's Drasin. But then suddenly, "the incoming vessel" becomes twenty-three(!!) Drasin ships! Wait, what?? "The incoming vessel" is one (1) ship, not twenty-three. And it didn't magically become twenty-three ships, either. The crew is aware of them fully. Something got lost in translation.The captain realizes the battle is lost and it is time to flee. As they do, the Drasin pursue. The captain orders the fleet to "deploy mines". These nuclear devices, it is described, are supposed to be a last resort. But the very next sentence in that paragraph describes fighter craft being launched to delay the Drasin. That didn't make much sense to me. Saying "deploy mines" and instead have fighters launch seems…as if there were a command missing. Saying "deploy mines and launch fighters" would have made a WHOLE lot more sense. But, as I said, odd story discontinuities.As I alluded to in the beginning, it's my understanding that between the initial publication of this book and the 'remastered' version, 47North has taken on the mantel of publishing (and the copyright page supports this), which includes, or should include, extensive proofreading. However, despite that, in addition to all the above discontinuities and other technical gaffs, spelling errors pepper the book, though not so much as to be completely distracting. However, in this day and age of spell check, they should not be, or be minimized tremendously (spell-check will miss words that are spelled right as far as the dictionary is concerned, but in the sentence they are being used in, are the wrong word - 'bare' and 'bear', for example). And this is when proofreaders are supposed to take over and catch the rest of the word misuses. Seems as if there was proofreader fail during the proofing step. Granted, they may have caught some stuff I didn't see in the original published manuscript to this remastered one. Still, they failed.One of the more glaring typos is Demos. I thought it was just a one-off typo for the moon base around Mars, but the moon at Mars is Deimos, not Demos. However, at *every* mention of the base, the author calls it Demos. Somewhere along the line, the 'i' was dropped from the name in his universe, with no explanation as to why that might be. So it's either a typo that propagated, or the author purposefully changed the spelling to fit his universe, but then gives the reader absolutely zero connection between his universe and that with which the reader is familiar.I don't want to slam the author. It takes a lot of work to put together a good story, and the overall story IS good! But the details, the technical bits…these appear to have been cast out speciously, without any real thought in linking them all together (some of them may have been, but others….really, not so much). So, sorry, Evan, I wanted to give this a lot of stars, but I can't for the above problems, even in the remastered version. I have started reading "Heart of the Matter" and plan to pick up "Homeworld", as I want to see the story through. I'm just afraid that the technical problems are going to mar it for me. :-( I know for a lot of people they don't really care about these continuity and factual accuracy issues, but for the others of us who do, it makes for a much tighter story.

Regardless of the back story, it is basically the Americans who send a warship (the Odyssey) out to explore deep space. Good thing too, as they have to start shooting things within a few minutes of finding an inhabitable planet.Rip roaring space romp, with the added bonus of using the most terrifying FTL transport ever dreamt up.One strange fault that an editor would have sorted out - Drones. The author had a freaky obsessive habit of using the word drone or drones in odd and sometimes conflicting circumstances.The goodies would launch drones to observe or attack the baddies.The baddies were insect like and referred to as...... drones. Like bees I suppose.The various motors and engines often droned in the hangars.And there was at least one situation where the drones attacked the drones and all the people could hear was the drone of the motors! "Can you hear that drone?" "I can hear that drone, our drone and their drone!" (not an actual quote from the book).I am currently half way through book two and the word drone hasn't come up once. I think someone had a quiet word in the authors ear.....

I’m a fan of sci-fi, although wouldn’t quite call myself a connoisseur of the genre. But I really enjoyed the book, found it very difficult to put down, which resulted in some rather later nights than expected.The characters are all well brought out, although I would consider them to be a little stereotypical (newly promoted Captain of starship feeling constrained by the responsibilities of command, that kind of thing). That said it didn’t get in the way of me being invested in them, and their character development. To be honest, I think this is the only criticism I could raise for this book.The balance between technical description (and relatively scientific plausibility) without getting too far into it fell just right. Mind you, I’m an engineer, so my “just right” may differ from others.The storyline was well paced, and split between the strategic and tactical scales excellently; whenever a switch was made the tension of wanting to find out what was going on at the other “scale” was very real, while also being gripped by the events I was currently reading.All told, would definitely recommend, and I’ll certainly be continuing the series.

I enjoyed reading it and will read the next in the series, but, the downside, story line style copied from Star Trek 1960's, totally unbelievable winning against unbeatable odds. Even had reference to USS Enterprise 'yawn'. Not to say that someone was called Worfe!!Great Sci-fi has to be believable, this wasn't.Far to much unnecessary tech. info waffling on and on which became laborious and tedious. It bogged the story down like mud. You could probably cut fifty pages from the book without noticing. I skipped whole pages at a time and didn't even notice.

I downloaded this as it was on offer for a limited time and after long years without reading much science-fiction I've started to look out for anything interesting or new. The book reminds me very much of something Tom Clancy might write if he wrote science-fiction, and indeed some of the scene could have come straight from Hunt for Red October. Into the Black is as much a military shoot-em-up as it is science-fiction. In line with this tradition there are many acronyms, tech-talk and descriptions of far-fetched technology.The blurb does say this is a revised edition, and I can see why, but can also see that it could do with perhaps another pass. Normally I would never finish a book with so many changes in point of view or rolling of eyes or smirking. And there is a lot of smirking going on, even when the smirkers are hidden behind darkened masks.So, despite its flaws I couldn't put this book down. I read the entirety of it in two sittings. If the standard of writing had been a bit higher I would have been tempted to give it five stars, but from me four is pretty good. I reserve that five for something spectacular - and only the fight scenes here are that.Worth reading... Now, on to the rest of the series.

This novel suffers from a few faults, but overall it is so well-written as to make up for most of them. The opening chapters contain a lot of explanation of the history and technology, most of which could have either been left out or deferred. Also the prose doesn't flow very well in places, there are repeated words that make for rather jerky reading, and occasional loose ends.However once the action gets going it really gets going. From about a quarter of the way in there are space battles, ground actions, daring rescues and frightening confrontations aplenty. The action is real edge of the seat material, the sort of narrative that keeps the reader up until 1am. It takes a while to start but once it does it is a total page turner.One thing that Currie has done which is very clever is to introduce a spaceship technology which is not quite faster than light, but fast enough to have major military action take in most of a solar system in a few hours.This gives the reader rapid development and room for both horror and heroism.It's enjoyable, a ripping yarn with spaceships in the mould of the classics. Overlook the faults and enjoy the story.