A review by preiman790
The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough

4.0

The year is 2283 and humanity is an endangered species. When mysterious alien visitors dropped a space elevator down square in the middle of Darwin Australia many considered it a gift to humanity. But when several years later those same aliens unleashed a plague on humanity degenerating most of the population down to the level of animals and the only safe place left on the planet is Darwin Australia perceptions changed. No one is sure why these aliens gave humanity either the gift or the curse, but finding out might be mankind’s only chance for survival when the aliens return again. Skyler Luiken is an immune. He is one of a very few people for whom the plague has no effect. His job along with a crew of other immunes is to travel outside the safe zone around the elevator to find and gather the supplies Darwin desperately needs to survive. But when the elevator starts to malfunction, Skyler and a brilliant scientist, Dr. Tania Sharma— to find out what is going wrong before the elevator stops working completely and the last humans fall to the same plague that doomed their planet several years before. I like to start off my reviews with the things I liked. The reason for this is simple, most people will only skim through a review anyway and stop when it’s half finished, staying just long enough to get the feel that this is or isn’t the book for them. So knowing that, I would prefer they make their determination based on the positive rather than the negative. So let’s get to the good stuff. While both an alien plague and a space elevator are nothing new to Science Fiction, Mr. Hough manages to put unique spins on both those things. The plague victims at first glance resemble zombies, but that’s just first glance. A fairer comparison would actually be to wild animals. They still suffer the same injuries that anyone else would and they still have thought and emotion, though in their case each suffers from a single overpowering emotion instead of the range that we baseline humans enjoy. And the elevator, never before have I seen them used to reinforce the mystery or even the tension of a book. But again that’s where Mr. Hough shines. He has not given into the temptation to just let the elevator be a piece of sciencey magic that’s always in the background. He has made it both a reminder to humanity of the aliens who are responsible for humanity’s damnation while at the same time being indispensable to humanity as the only thing keeping the plague away by providing transport to and from the large orbital farms that are the only source of food they have left. That concept of a mixed blessing is one we see over and over again in the Darwin Elevator; from the relatively comfortable lives of the orbital farmers and scientists to the treatment of immunes. But beyond the fun Science Fiction McGuffins, the Darwin Elevator is a great look into a society fresh from one apocalypse that has just found out they may be facing another one. The political intrigue was entertaining and realistic and the characters were all well rounded, especially Skyler. Perhaps Skyler, as Captain of his little ship and crew it would have been very easy to make him a great Captain. The kind we see in our beloved Star Trek, Battlestar or dare I say it Firefly. But instead he is adequate, not a terrible commander but by no means a great one. One of the biggest problems he has is that he may very well be too nice for the job, and Skyler is aware of it> He is constantly comparing himself to his predecessor and coming up short. For me, this made him the perfect protagonist, you know throughout the story that he is not the best man for the job; he’s just the only one capable. So now that we’ve gone over what worked, let’s just for a sec talk about what didn’t. Or at least what didn’t work for me. While the characters and overall story were very well done, I did feel myself left a bit cold by the action scenes, I always felt a bit disconnected from them and found myself wishing we could just get back to the story. Fortunately, it seems Mr. Hough felt the same way, as for the most part action sequences are short and to the point, relying on a minimum of description to get the point across. My only other issue is one I am sure will get better with practice; that’s pacing. At parts of the story, things kind of blew past with little time to digest while at others the pace slowed down to a crawl. All flaws aside I really did like this book, and genuinely look forward to the sequel All in all I give the Darwin Elevator a four out of five. With the note that if those minor issues are improved upon the next book will have no trouble getting a perfect score.