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

5.0

I am swinging into full summer reading mode now. Action packed adventure stories are my friends. The Darwin Elevator has been sitting on my Kindle for some time now. I have so many books to read that it isn't surprising that gems by authors I don't know take me awhile to get to. Let me tell you people. This one was a gem. It hits the ground running and never takes its foot off the gas pedal. It has everything a good summer read should have. Lots of action. Great characters to root for. Bad guys you want to see get theirs and an intriguing mystery wrapped around a great science fiction novel.

The first of three books in the Dire Earth series. The book is easy on the eyes. It is a fast and fun read. I loved this story in particular. An alien civilization does a fly by and drops a space elevator into the middle of Darwin, Australia and then disappears. Mankind begins to reverse engineer the technology and before you know it we are building space stations connected to the elevator. The only problem is the elevator didn't just bring technology. It brings an infection that turns anyone outside of the aura of the space elevator into a raving lunatic. Soon earth is a vast wasteland and the lone survivors are in Darwin and the space stations. Of course, there is also the looming mystery of where the hell did the aliens who dropped the elevator go and are they ever coming back.

Did I say I loved this book. I know I am getting a little redundant but really you should go read this. It reads like a cross between a space opera and a western. It has some of my favorite new characters in fiction. People you can really root for. The plot is great but Hough saves up some really nice twists. You think you know where it is going and the wham, left turn. Definitely a series I won't be waiting long to read the next book. Mr. Hough is a now on my must read list. He should be on yours also.