Review: Chasing Solace

Chasing Solace by Karl Drinkwater
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A compelling, suspenseful story of survival and quest.

The author writes horror, and this does have some horror aspects - most of the book is the protagonist making her way through a deserted spaceship that's an abbatoir, with all of the disgusting fluids, sinister tools, and reminders of industrial-scale suffering that implies. Plus monsters trying to eat her face.

I'm not a horror reader at all, but to me, this didn't end up being offputting. It was mitigated by the fact that the protagonist was sealed away from all the gunk in an environment suit, and that she'd survived a similar trip in the previous book and looked certain to survive this one. There was still plenty of suspense and action, well paced.

The character had a clear goal (find her way to her missing sister), and worked steadily and bravely towards it, while her resources, weapons, and tools were gradually used up or lost. The chapter numbering is in reverse order, which provided a kind of countdown that, for me, helped to give a sense of momentum and urgency.

Importantly, the protagonist isn't without someone to talk to: the AI from her ship. This gives another layer of relationship to the story, and helps us come to know the protagonist better, while still leaving her battling physically alone.

There are, near the end, some genuinely alien-seeming aliens in a genuinely alien-feeling setting, which is hard to do and, here, is well done.

I wouldn't recommend reading this one without having read the first in the series; there's no real recap or backstory feed, and a lot of it will make no sense if you start here. But if you enjoyed the first book, for my money this is even better, and the first one was already good.

Disclaimer: The author gave me a review copy (and no other inducement) because I'd reviewed the first book. I don't normally do reviews by author request, but in this case I'd enjoyed Book 1, so I made an exception - and I didn't regret it.

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