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The Last Star
Beware god-like aliens bearing giftsStasis and inorganic self-repair, new spacefaring technologies for humankind, yet more gifts from its closest extra-terrestrial ally, the Iaens. There are, it seems, no limits to humanity’s outward journey.
Then Lana Reed, Mission Commander of the interstellar colony seeder, Drake, awakes from her own stasis to discover that all but three of the vessel’s other tanks are dark, their occupants suffocated, screaming yet unheard in their high-tech coffins. But the stasis tanks are not all that is dark. The sensors return no readings from outside. The external vid-feeds show only unending blackness.
There are no stars to be seen. No planet song to be heard. No galaxy cry. No echoing radio signals that proclaim life.
The Drake and its surviving crew are adrift and alone in a lightless, empty universe.
Cover design and artwork by Alex Storer
From Terry Grimwood, another taste of the human realpolitik alliance withg the Iaen, begun in Interference.
Then Lana Reed, Mission Commander of the interstellar colony seeder, Drake, awakes from her own stasis to discover that all but three of the vessel’s other tanks are dark, their occupants suffocated, screaming yet unheard in their high-tech coffins. But the stasis tanks are not all that is dark. The sensors return no readings from outside. The external vid-feeds show only unending blackness.
There are no stars to be seen. No planet song to be heard. No galaxy cry. No echoing radio signals that proclaim life.
The Drake and its surviving crew are adrift and alone in a lightless, empty universe.
Cover design and artwork by Alex Storer
From Terry Grimwood, another taste of the human realpolitik alliance withg the Iaen, begun in Interference.
153 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 5, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
April 27, 2026
Grimwood always delivers and this SF novel is packed with ideas: a crew in suspended animation wakes to find the majority of their associates have not survived the journey, and, come to that, neither has the solar system. Having journeyed in both space and time the vista outside their craft is not as expected, yet soon they will need to find somewhere to land in order to perpetuate the human race.
I thought the nub of this story was excellent, however the telling became too technical for my tastes, and Grimwood's usual swift depictions of action scenes were held back a little by the confines of the spaceship. Even so, there was much to enjoy here, and the reappearance (of a kind) of the Iaen alien lifeform from a previous novella (the excellent Interference) gains the book a star (if not the last star).
I thought the nub of this story was excellent, however the telling became too technical for my tastes, and Grimwood's usual swift depictions of action scenes were held back a little by the confines of the spaceship. Even so, there was much to enjoy here, and the reappearance (of a kind) of the Iaen alien lifeform from a previous novella (the excellent Interference) gains the book a star (if not the last star).
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review