Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1

Liked the message of the book. Always fight back.

Great mix of familiar names with the near future. Great character building. Very invested in what happens to them. Highly recommend read.

Absolutely loved the f out of it. Rarely does a story rank so high on readability and hit all the notes in perfect timbre. Beautiful work.

Really fun book. Some hard scifi elements, not overdone. Good story. Characters are nice - the internal monologue got ateeny bit repetitive for me. Really good read overall.

Theft of Fire struck me as far more polished than I expected from the first novel self published by the author. I suspect Devon Erikson has put the work in on short stories and maybe an unpublished novel or 2 to get here. He's at least gone through all the dutiful steps with this one as stated in his afterword, initial read, beta readers, editor.As for the book it's very close to an Expanse setting. It almost felt like the same universe. But I soon realized, hey for a realistic depiction of this stage of solar system exploration it's all going to be very similar.It's an engaging story, written in first person really keeps it grounded, er, even when floating in space. Great characters, realistic and distinct.Having just read Consider Phlebas by Ian M Banks, I have to say Theft of Fire is a better novel in all aspects, characters, plot, even the writing.Ramps up into a pageturner, try the kindle sample and you will likely be hooked :)

Very predictable - which is awesome because those predictions of mine most often started with "it would be great/cool if...". The author does a great job of weaving things together in a way that just makes sense, without ever letting his overarching plans get in the way of making each moment entertaining to the reader. Don't let my grade fool you, the book is not without flaws - but nothing anyone ever does is, it was still a damn great ride.

I bought and read this book a while ago, but wanted to let my opinions on it marinate for a bit to avoid being too effusive or too negative (I tend to have strong opinions on media in the immediate aftermath). Having given it a few months at this point, I feel like I can be fair.WRITING: 99.9% of the book is written in first person, present tense. It’s an interesting style choice, and it’s honestly kind of jarring at first. I start-stopped like 3x in the first 20-30 pages, putting it down and coming back hours or days later. Not because it’s written badly, but just because it’s so unusual that it genuinely takes some getting used to. You ever tried to make a really old-timey dinner recipe, and marveled at how WEIRD it tasted? Not necessarily bad. It just doesn’t really correspond to the tastes that you’re used to. That was this book for me (that is not, however, a suggestion that the writing is ‘old-timey’).Once I got through the initial adjustment period, I basically flew through this book. I read it in every available spare moment, at work and at home. It’s a good book. The pacing is fantastic. I genuinely didn’t expect to be as into it as I was.Action scenes are written well. Actual ‘action movie’ action is somewhat sparse, but well-handled. Author knows not to overexplain, and seems to stick pretty close to action being ‘pacing + vibe’ rather than ‘agonizingly describe the physical mechanics of this judo throw,’ which is good. It fits the general pacing of the rest of the story.I really can’t say enough about how good the pacing is. This is really hard to do right, especially in a sustained manner, for an entire novel. Even good authors usually have a weak spot somewhere. This book really doesn’t drag ANYWHERE.CHARACTERS: The writing style and prose seems impeccably accurate to the sort of character our protagonist is. Like, plenty of books can be said to ‘transport you to another world,’ but A LOT fewer seem like they truly put you in the mind of the main character. Is this because Marcus as a character is few enough relative jumps away from the author that he’s easy to ‘get in the mind of,’ or is Devon just an absurdly good character writer? I guess this question isn’t getting answered until we see something else from him, but I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s some of the most immersive writing I have ever read.The other characters are well-written. There are only three characters though. I couldn’t stand Miranda for most of the book, but I’m pretty sure this was the author’s intention, because the PoV character can’t either. In any case, everybody at least seems – if not *sympathetic*, then at least understandable. Everyone behaves intelligently in their situation, in line with the sort of knowledge/experience they would have.STORY: Interesting, tightly plotted, with an appropriate amount of suspense. It feels cool watching Marcus figure things out. He’s clearly very intelligent, but he struggles and ‘shows his work’ enough to keep him from feeling like a modern media caricature of LE HIGH IQ PERSON. Most of the story is Marcus having to figure things out, so this is good.INTANGIBLES: I can’t really make any fair comparisons for this book. I don’t normally read sci-fi, and I especially don’t read “hard sci-fi.” I cannot stand it. I am a huge nerd, but I am not the kind of huge nerd that wants to spend pages reading about how futuristic spaceships avoid being perforated by micrometeors, or how “we absolutely don’t have light speed, so here’s a treatise about orbital mechanics and some inscrutable Delta-v stuff,” or about how incredibly boring (from a narrative/observer’s standpoint) space battles would actually be in real life.It says something that I didn’t even realize this book was “hard sci-fi” until afterward when I saw people posting about how it was. Then I thought about it. Yeah, it does conform to some pretty ‘realistic’ limitations in its science, and yeah, it does go out of its way to explain most of this stuff to you. But it seems to flow so naturally – both narratively, and in a cognitive “yes, THIS would quite plausibly result in THAT” sense – that I didn’t realize I had consumed a number of scientific and engineering lectures until other people reminded me about it. Huh. So THIS is what it feels like to be effectively guided through exposition, rather than sat down and forced to endure it. Interesting.CONS: I really can’t think of any. There were a handful of minor spelling/grammar mistakes peppered throughout, but I’m not a person who is particularly annoyed by such things (so long as they aren’t egregious). I found the initial few chapters a little tough to get into, but it’s entirely likely this is my issue rather than one with the book. I’m happy I kept trying.OVERALL: I don’t write 1.5-page-long reviews for books I don’t deeply enjoy, not even for ‘culture war’ purposes. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys SF or adventure novels. It’s definitely the best book I have read this year, and possibly the best I have read that has come out this decade so far.

Letto tutto d'un fiato. Lo stile ricorda un pò quello di The Expanse con scontri e dettagli della vita e dei viaggi nello spazio estremamente realistici e scientificamente accurati.I personaggi sono scritti davvero bene e si apprezza tanto che ognuno abbia le sue motivazioni e non sia solo un cartonato funzionale alla trama.Bon spoilero intenzionalmente nulla. Leggetelo, ne vale la pena.

Having just finished the book, now I'm in that odd state between happiness at having been royally entertained and taken on an adventure, and sadness that the story's over (thankfully just for now as it's the first book in a series)An absorbing read from start to finish. Fully developed characters whose interplay drives the narrative on, genuinely heart thumping action scenes, an impressively imagined and wholly believable vision of the near future extrapolated from today's world with believable pseudo physics / science, a fascinating underpinning premise, and all of it written in an eminently engaging and flowing styleI cannot wait for Book 2 hopefully coming in early 2025!