What happens when the ship you need to support your life suddenly turns on you? Catherine Jinks book, Living Hell, takes us on board the space ship Plexus where life is idyllic as a group of human’s traverse the galaxy looking for an unknown and non discussed place to land. What makes this interesting is about 1/3 of the book is all set up, descriptors of life and times aboard the ship. Meeting the characters, and finding out their individual flaws, contributions, and personalities. We also learn a lot about the physical make up of the ship including holographic systems for virtual reality entertainment and experience. The stage is carefully set for mayhem. The (Spoilers) event that causes the robots and the ship itself to turn on its human cargo happens about 1/3 in the book, leaving the rest of the book dealing with the aftermath and subsequent consequences of the “event”.
In all this is an interesting book, drawing on a number of doomsday scenarios that are tightly wound as a subtext to the entire book. If you are a follower of good science fiction dooms day scenarios this is an excellent addition to “humans living in a space ship where everything goes wrong”. I also like the idea that this book is science fiction, good hard-core traditional science fiction and one that is sorely lacking in our post cyberpunk or fantasy science fiction world. That alone makes this book an important and meaningful addition to the current science fiction market; it is much like the good science fiction from Niven, Asimov and Heinlein.
I found the book enjoyable for many reasons, the characters are believable, and the disaster is believable with a good set up and a dynamic range of responses. The blood and gore at times were overdone, but that is also ok from the viewpoint of the characters, but for some readers that part of the book could have been toned down a bit, but in the sense of the book, it is more of an objective rather than a counter point. I enjoyed the book, and found that I kept on reading it because I was starting to get engrossed in the book, the characters and the situation. Four of Five stars (the reason this is not five of five is the overdone gore) overall. However, on the broader note, this is good science fiction, and for that reason alone should be part of everyone science fiction’s collection.
Tags: Catherine Jinks, science fiction, book, living hell, spaceship, disaster
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