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A review by amcglinchey
The Strange Taste of Metal by K.A. Burgess, K.A. Burgess
4.0
Lots of fun - The Martian meets Leviathan Wakes with a dash of Firefly.
The premise is great - a jack-of-all-trades adventurer on Mars joins a research mission to a new planet. Along the way they discover remarkable and dangerous life forms, as well as signs of another intelligent species in the cosmos. It all culminates in an alien artefact from that alien species making its way back to our own solar system, and our intrepid crew must save the day with bravery and cleverness.
If I can make some constructive feedback: the crew of the ship are lightly drawn, to the point where I had some trouble remembering who was who. Each crew member had their own motivations and an arc, but each was brief enough that I barely really followed them.
I definitely enjoyed the characters' snappy dialogue. They tease and bicker and show their adventurous bravado with quips. They do seem to do this even in moments of considerable stress and horror -- one of their crew is badly mutilated by a wild alien animal, or they are at life-threatening risk of being stranded by a solar storm and a malfunctioning spaceship, and still they wisecrack and discuss what they're having for lunch.
Also, they drink a *heroic* amount of coffee.
Some of my favorite parts are the bits of science fiction research: the characters undergo intense g-forces during acceleration or deceleration, there's discussion of Lagrange points and why a planet might be tidally locked, there's auroras, interplanetary lightspeed-limited communications, radiation damage, a solar system economy of settlements on moons and planets, plus a thoughtful ecology of interacting plants and animals on a planet with different conditions from ours. Very satisfying sci-fi world-building.
The premise is great - a jack-of-all-trades adventurer on Mars joins a research mission to a new planet. Along the way they discover remarkable and dangerous life forms, as well as signs of another intelligent species in the cosmos. It all culminates in an alien artefact from that alien species making its way back to our own solar system, and our intrepid crew must save the day with bravery and cleverness.
If I can make some constructive feedback: the crew of the ship are lightly drawn, to the point where I had some trouble remembering who was who. Each crew member had their own motivations and an arc, but each was brief enough that I barely really followed them.
I definitely enjoyed the characters' snappy dialogue. They tease and bicker and show their adventurous bravado with quips. They do seem to do this even in moments of considerable stress and horror -- one of their crew is badly mutilated by a wild alien animal, or they are at life-threatening risk of being stranded by a solar storm and a malfunctioning spaceship, and still they wisecrack and discuss what they're having for lunch.
Also, they drink a *heroic* amount of coffee.
Some of my favorite parts are the bits of science fiction research: the characters undergo intense g-forces during acceleration or deceleration, there's discussion of Lagrange points and why a planet might be tidally locked, there's auroras, interplanetary lightspeed-limited communications, radiation damage, a solar system economy of settlements on moons and planets, plus a thoughtful ecology of interacting plants and animals on a planet with different conditions from ours. Very satisfying sci-fi world-building.