The Burning Dark

Spider Wars #1

by Adam Christopher

Adam Christopher's dazzling first novel, Empire State, was named the Best Book of 2012 by SciFi Now magazine. Now he explores new dimensions of time and space in The Burning Dark.

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station's reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station's systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.

Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic a woman's voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?

"Builds tension expertly. Claustrophobic in mood but with the scope of great space opera, this is SF you will want to read with the light on."—Library Journal, starred review, on The Burning Dark

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Aliens, Space, Thriller, Space Opera

335 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 14, 2014

About the author

Adam Christopher is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith and Master of Evil,  Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town. He has also written official tie-in novels for the hit CBS television show Elementary and the award-winning Dishonored video game franchise.

Co-creator of the twenty-first-century incarnation of Archie Comics superhero The Shield, Adam has also written for the universes of Doctor Who and World of Warcraft, and is a contributor to the internationally bestselling Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View anniversary anthology series and the all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic.

Adam’s original novels include Made to Kill and The Burning Dark, among many others, and his debut novel Empire State was both a SciFi Now and Financial Times book of the year.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

synopsis: creepy whispers and other frightening things occur during the dismantling of a space station that lies under the shadow of a dread dark star. 😨

what I thought would be a sleek and scary bit of horror in space, perhaps by way of Alien or - since I'm not one to get my hopes up too far - maybe Event Horizon... turned out to be not so horrific. rather a jumble and eventually a drag.

Adam Christopher is a proficient author who gives the impression that he had a great time writing this. and it is fun, in its way. but the characterization is terribly off: Christopher tries really, really hard to give them some depth but his attempt comes across more as things to check off of the Tragic Backstory List with a side of Worst Coincidence(s) To Happen To A Person Ever. another big minus is that the entire novel is woefully underpopulated, which oddly enough served only to make things less scary - despite over a hundred station personnel present, I could count the actual characters on one hand. it's impossible for me to be scared when it is mainly a bunch of nameless, personality-less marines being killed off. even Alien had more characters! also, if you are going to give a character the profession of "psy-marine" then please explain what that means and give her an opportunity to demonstrate her powers before the final act! finally, the whole bullying of a Captain by a couple of mean marines was pretty eye-rolling. I know that hazing is real, of course... but picking on a person well above your rank? that's not the military that I know or grew up in. military hierarchy would definitely mean that grunts will not be bullying officers.

still, despite the very weak characterization, the novel has its moments. although the villain is overly telegraphed in the first half of the book (including way too many mentions of "burning blue eyes"), I thought it was

WATCH OUT! SPOILER AHEAD!

weirdly wonderful that she hailed from the Japanese tradition of menacing spirit-women. what a happy surprise. I certainly did not except Ring/The Grudge/Tomie in space! that was pretty cool.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars

Burning Dark by Adam Christopher is a fantastic piece of science fiction horror. It would be more apt to call this a futuristic ghost story than anything else, but even that isn’t right on. Ghosts, space aliens, space aliens that look likes spiders, space aliens that look like spiders and come in planet eating sizes. An unexplainable toxic light star that is the center of this story.These are just a few of the things found in this real page turner.

Think about the movie Event Horizon, or more recently Sunshine, swap the sun out for a shadow star, and you get an idea what this book is like. This is a story where dread, suspense, and the unknown flavor the pages and leave you wanting to find out more. It really worked. Ida is a good protagonist as his age, his experience, and his bravado work and can carry the weight of this story.

Christopher’s writing style blew me away as this was the first book of his that I have read. I will run out for more now and am an instant fan. He writes suspense in this book and builds dread up to a point that is nearly palatable. Sure, some of the twists and turns in this book have been done a thousand times before, but so what, this is what makes a book so damn fun to read. I loved the world building, the war with the spiders, even the politics behind our retiring Captain. When Ida builds his radio, the whole story comes together and makes sense and I loved it. Parts of this also reminded me of Michael Keaton’s White Noise movie, but in a good sense. Christopher writes this story that makes it clear that things are not what they seem and that something bigger is at large.

What a fabulous ride this story is. I enjoyed the ending and would be satisfied if this was a standalone. That being said, Christopher has built a Universe here that deserves much more attention and I can easily see this being a series to keep coming back to.

This is not a military science fiction, and there is no hard science either. It is not a gore fest, nor is it an action event. It is however a masterful thriller that builds on suspense, dread, and the unknown in a futuristic world…..BRAVO!!!!

[David Sven · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable military scifi come psychological horror thriller.

Nearly a a thousand years in the future humanity has been colonising space, and is at war with the "Spiders" - a machine intelligence that likes to literally pull planets apart. As large as planets themselves, the "Mother" spiders grab on and sink their claws/fangs in until whatever planetary body it's holding onto falls apart all while spawning egg sacks of smaller spiders that grow as they consume resources.

But that's just the background setting. We learn all that from the main protagonist at the beginning when he relates the story of the military action where he earned his medal. The real story takes place on the Coast City - a space station in the process of being decommissioned. Most of the marines have been evacuated, leaving behind a relatively small crew to finish up deconstruction. So a lot of empty corridors and off limits areas - we have our spooky derelict in space.

But there's more. The station is also situated near a mysterious star called "Shadow"

Nobody liked being out here, not within touching distance of a star so foreign, so alien, that it felt like it was alive, like it was watching. Maybe the Coast City wasn’t watching the star; maybe the star was watching the Coast City.

The star burns dark giving off a purple blue glow - or as all on the station like to say it "The light that will #@$! you up."

Serra got it: The light of Shadow will fuck you up. It wasn’t hard to understand. First it would eat through the shielding on your visor; then it would burn your mind out through your optic nerve. Shadow was an evil mother.

Anyway, weird and creepy stuff starts happening on the station. You know how at the movies the guy or gal thinks they see something down the dark corridor lurking in the shadows and so they do the stupidest thing you can imagine and decide it's a good idea to be going down there to investigate on their own? It's that sort of creepy. But they got guns right? Yeah - but you can't shoot shadows and you can't kill what's already dead.

You may have heard of Sub Space - well welcome to Hell Space


4 burning dark stars

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.

Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?

My Review: Compulsively readable, like all of Christopher's work appears to be. I was up until 12:45a as the pages, it seemed, turned themselves.

I loved Ida (our captain and PoV character is so yclept) for his square-jawed, straight-shootin' inability to lie, tolerate lies, or accept anything less than the facts in any arena. I know him, of course, from a squazillion other books, movies, and TV shows. He's surrounded by snakes and fools, and he's one man against the Universe.

Except he doesn't exist. All the computer records and Flyeyes (combination secretary, file clerk, and cyborg) who run the world's electronic memories agree that Ida isn't. His great military victory against the Spiders (more cyborgs, this time *really* scary) also isn't. And it's one of the very few victories in the war.

This does not sit well with Ida, whose medal for the matter means a lot to him. He can't investigate effectively in the Coast City's orbit around one of the weirdest energy masses in Fleetspace. That's what we call the equivalent of the Free World from the Cold War years.

Ghostly happenings, a lot of fist-fights, a few really really handy coincidences, and the story gets its deeper tale all nice and set up. That's not a knock on the book, by the way. This is a fully realized story on its own, and its resolution is such that the lukewarm responder wouldn't feel the lack of an ending as in so many other series books.

There are a lot of in-jokes (a starship called the Bloom County, for a wonderful example, and a starship called the Carcona captained by a man named Manutius for an Italian flavored other) and a bunch of ideas that suggest, to me at least, that Christopher has read Rupert Sheldrake's books. This is a darn good entertainment with a serious and still shivery point to it. Jeff, Roni: Go now and procure. Everyone else, at least flip through it and see what grabs ya.

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the shadowland of the dead, she sat and cried for her husband, but the prison was sealed and she could not leave and nobody could hear her.
The shadows surrounded her, swarming like living, breathing creatures. The shadows caressed her skin, holding the rotting flesh onto her bones. Things crawled over her and ate the flesh, but the shadows kept her firm, kept her whole as the things ate, and ate, and ate.
It was too late.
She had eaten the food of the underworld, and she could not return. So she sat in the shadows, and cried for her husband, and things ate her flesh.

With an opening like that I thought I was in for the next great sci/fi/cosmic horror book to add to my growing list of favorites. I can't really say I was disappointed because I did enjoy the story but it never materialized into what I would consider an outright horror title. I would consider this a creepy, suspense story with some horror moments.
The setting is ideal for this type of story, a space station in the process of being dismantled

The entire fleet was modular, allowing for an infinite number of combinations and functions, limited only by the imagination of the Marine-Engineer Corps-which meant that, actually, the vehicles of the fleet only came in five different forms.

So there are large areas that have already been dismantled and the other areas are automated for energy usage and human occupation, in other words, very low lighting. It's great for seeing shadows and hearing voices, which is exactly what begins to happen. Oh, and the star the station has been studying, bathes near space in purple. Captain Cleveland is sent to oversee the rest of the dismantling as his final assignment before retiring and isn't exactly welcomed with open arms by the marines on site. The previous commander has left the station before Cleveland arrives and no one is exactly sure when or how he left.

There are some pretty cool ideas about subspace

Ida closed his eyes, leaned back, and listened. The sound of subspace wasn't just white noise and it had nothing to do with the Big Bang. The sound of subspace was the angry roar of the nothing that resonated between space. It was weird, alien.

The suspense does build quite well as some of the mysteries surrounding the star, the commander and Captain Cleveland are revealed and in the end I did enjoy the story...even though it wasn't exactly what I had expected.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this story up until the end, and thus had to remove one star. The ending read like something out of a superhero comic book. Too over-the-top, and more fantasy than science fiction. Disappointing.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review was originally posted on Avid Reviews: www.avidfantasyreviews.wordpress.com

Acclaimed author Adam Christopher brings us the start to a new series with The Burning Dark. Unlike his previous books, this novel is a Sci-Fi/ horror crossover. It is an interesting new addition to the Sci-Fi genre that takes the setting and overarching plot line of a space opera with the feeling of a ghost story. Christopher employs a writing style that utilizes internal monologue from several different points of view, but that has a pervading chilling aspect that seems to seep into every scene.
This book takes place on the U-Star Coast City, a space station in the backwater near a toxic star. Coast City has been decommissioned, and now holds only a skeleton crew waiting for a final ride back to civilization, and a new posting that actually matters. After saving an entire planet from an alien race known as the Spiders, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland (Ida to his friends) finds himself relegated to Coast City with a crew that doesn’t trust him, or believe that he is a war hero. After the station’s system starts to malfunction, and the strange star makes communications almost impossible, Ida builds himself an old-fashioned space radio that unfortunately only reaches the ghostly voice of a strange woman. Throughout Ida’s problems with both his crew and his ship, strange alien shadows and ghostly figures haunt the empty station, putting both Captain and crew on edge.
I found this book to be both engaging and well written. Christopher is able to infuse a sense of wrongness and unease into even the most mundane scenes, and even though the summary for this novel sounds relatively simple, the plot is intricate and sets the stage for a series that is bound to set on an epic scale. The book’s characters are also well developed, and it is easy to become immersed in their world, their emotions, and their fears through their internal monologues, especially when the reader becomes accustomed to the rhythm of Christopher’s writing.
Even though I enjoyed the book, I felt that the ending was a bit anti-climatic after such a large build-up and mysterious nature of the plot. The novel is fast paced throughout almost the entire book, but seems to fade off rather quickly in the last quarter of the novel. The tension that has been building is also released during this time, leaving the reader ready for the book to end rather than itching to read the next novel in the series. Despite this, I am still looking forward to reading the next book in the series, and I have high hopes that Christopher will gain back his momentum for The Burning Dark’s second installment.
Overall I would rate this book a 7/10, but I think that the series has great potential to become even better in its subsequent releases.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in return for an honest review.

[Kaisersoze · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for sci-fi horror. There I said it. I probably don't need to elaborate on that admission any further than to say the Aliens film franchise had a significant effect on me in my youth. Except perhaps to add that I think Event Horizon was a genuinely creepy film - despite it being from Paul W. S. Anderson.

So it was that I approached The Burning Dark with no small level of expectation.

When, oh when, will I learn ...

This is a mash-up of any number of sci-fi and horror works you've read or seen before. Author Adam Christopher adds his own spin in the form of some pretty interesting sounding spider-like aliens intent on destroying human kind, often by way of a "Mother Spider", a construct big enough to level an entire planet. Unfortunately, these aliens are quickly back-seated in favour of a mysterious space station on the outer reaches of space that is being decommissioned and has only a skeleton crew left in residence when increasingly strange and dangerous things begin to occur. There's also a military-wide cover-up, radio communications from the past, ghost-like visions, and a twist so obvious that even the greenest of modern-day horror readers will pick it at least half a dozen chapters before the reveal.

Not helping matters is I never really connected with any of the characters within The Burning Dark, and subsequently failed to care when they began disappearing or were put in harm's way. Perhaps it was just me. Perhaps I'm being overly critical, but I was hoping for a lot from this one, and all I got was disappointment once it was obvious the Spiders weren't going to have any major impact on proceedings and I wasn't reading anything new and engaging beyond them and their huge planet-sucking beast.

Recommended for hardcore sci-fi completists only.

2 Horizons Evented for The Burning Dark.

[Ryan Lawler · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this book I'm left with one question - how did this book go so far off the rails? I mean I was loving this book, I was churning through the pages, I thought the first two thirds were among some of the best sci-fi I've read in past few years. It was a haunted house as a derelict space ship, with creepy ghosts making use of various radio frequencies. There were moments were things were really creepy.

And then, the author tried to explain it all away. Suspense was replaced with convoluted conspiracy theories. Things got confusing. It was bad. Really bad. My eyes glazed over, I stopped feeling anything for the characters, and I just wanted the book to end. Christopher kinda recovers the magic for the last 5%, but I was already too far gone to be pulled back.

I'm so disappointed given how strong the start was.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this wasn't at all what I expected. From the description I was expecting a military SF novel with a bit of a mystery element, but surprisingly this one was much more a horror story in a SF setting. Complete with jump scares and allusions to the supernatural.

I don't have a huge tolerance for horror and some of the horror tropes/elements went on a bit too long for my taste without moving the plot forward, but overall it's a satisfying story.

Describing it in a spoilery way it's Event Horizon by way of Cabin in the Woods.

[Sachin Dev · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Burning Dark is my second book by Adam Christopher - Having earlier read his excellent debut, Empire State - his take on superheroes - I would like to say I've become familiar with his craft and imagery that he builds out.

With this book, however Adam makes a departure from his urban fantasy/pulp-noir books, steering towards a horror/sci-fi mash-up in the first of the Spider War Chronicles. Hell, a haunted house story on the outer fringes of space ? Absolutely original idea and I was all for it. I was also stoked when I spied the book on certain 2014-best-of lists. I jumped right in - hooked by the strange Captain Abraham "Ida" Cleveland and his quirkiness.

I have to say, this isn't strictly a science-fiction book. While yes - it does feature your regular sci-fi gadgetry and terminologies - psi-marines, warp-drives, sentient aliens, shadow stars and more - It is more of the old-school creepy psychological horror story. The world is at war - with a giant sentient machine race called Spiders that can blast clean through and eat the core of a frigging planet itself. In a hopeless war, Captain Ida's act of bravery of saving an entire planet from the Spiders - earns him a Fleet Medal, the "Hero" tag and a sort of retirement - where as a final job, he has to oversee the deconstruction of a decommissioned space-ship on the outer fringes. Things get a little weird out on this space-ship - where the Commander has gone missing, the purple star next to it interferes with the communication signals and the captain seems to have a hard time fitting in. He makes no friends except for the medic - an asian woman with blue eyes called Izanami.

Adam cranks hard on the spookiness winch right from get-go - practical jokes, weird sounds, shadowy corridors, noises or echo from uncharted radio-freqs. Sadly Captain Ida as one of the central characters never really struck a chord with me. He's a hero straight out of the 90's horror movies - who brushes past incredulous happenings without a second thought. You almost take him to be slightly stupid for NOT asking those obvious questions as the paranoia rockets up on board the ship. Crew members go missing. The tension though - never really rises above to the notches of white-knuckled terror.

The plot after the first half where Adam masterfully sets out the environment kind of slows down. We're hit with repetitive scenes of crew members missing and Ida being confused and holding onto his steadfast denial mode. Also the questions that arose in my mind around "why" or "what" is happening were hurriedly dealt with in the last few chapters in a rather unsatisfactory manner. A little predictable foreshadowing of events shoehorned into the last proceedings. The action never takes off and I was left a bit frustrated.

The book doesn't do justice to the potential of Adam Christopher whose first book was such a knockout take on super-heroes and alternate reality-planes. A fine master of imagery and language, Adam is never able to really spur his literary horse into a gallop here. Instead we are left plodding through murky and boring territories that leaves the readers a little puzzled maybe but not too horror-struck or spooked out. But to give him his due, the settings are definitely rich. A sentient machine race that threatens to wallop humanity and deep space marine action waiting to be explored - hopefully in his next outing in the Spider Wars series. As for this starting book in that series, it's strictly an OK read.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished 'The Burning Dark' by Adam Christopher and liked it quite a bit.
I see some are rating it poorly and can't disagree more. When reading a story I try to consider whether or not the author has written in this genre previously and if so, how much. If, like this, it is the authors first venture into this specific genre, I tend to go a little easier. Plus I read first for pure entertainment and second for general problems.

With that in mind I feel the story is great. It had me nervous at times and I could visualize the story with ease. In some ways it reminded me of the film "Event Horizon" which is incredibly spooky. Also brought memories of "Solaris". Both films are 5 star in my list.

Yes, there is a lot going on, but it is handled well and isn't 'busy' in any way.

I would have liked to get more information in a few spots, but it doesn't detract from the story at all. In fact, the unknowns add to the story. The reader is wondering about several things, most of which are answered by story end.

A military man at the end of his career awarded a medal for a battle that has been either covered up or deleted from all files.
A space station being decommissioned from which crew start to disappear including the Commandant.
A star that is unlike any other and has an 'influence' on people.
A mysterious book left by the missing Commandant and so much more.

I am left thoughtful and replaying the story in my head. Which to me, means it was a very good story. I want to talk about it and see how others react. I want another story in this vein.
Adam Christopher is rising fast on my favorite author list.

[Gerhard · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a disappointing military / horror SF hybrid that tries its best to rise above its Event Horizon style plot. Instead it succumbs to a welter of clichés that a savvy genre reader can see from a mile away. The ending seems a bit rushed and keeps much of the resolution under wraps for the inevitable sequel(s).

There is not much science in this science fiction novel. While Adam Christopher does throw in the concept of Olbers’ Paradox (the so-called Dark Night Sky Paradox), he rather unhelpfully refers to Shadow as the star whose light “will fuck you up”.

The concept of subspace / hellspace as a kind of portal to Lovecraftian horrors is creakingly old-fashioned. And does not really amount to much in the end: the sense of wonder here is muted and tired. Added to this novel’s long list of woes is the lacklustre characterisation.

Despite being sub-titled Spider Wars #1, the titular aliens do not really make an appearance. However, there is plenty of scope here for a successful continuation, as long as Christopher takes it in a direction that is truly exciting and terrifying.

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

The Burning Dark is an interesting mix of two genres: a haunted house type of thriller with sci fi trappings. It is also a very cinematic book, conjuring images when being read that could come directly from a movie. But the spooky premise and 'bump in the night' chills are offset by an anticlimactic reveal at the end and a distractingly disjointed beginning.

Plot: Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland is a veteran of a nasty war against monstrous machines that are destroying whole worlds. Before retiring after a huge battle that nearly killed him, he is sent on a last mission, one that seems innocuous enough: finish the decomissioning and salvaging of a remote space station. But when he arrives, he quickly realizes something isn't right: his battle records are missing (causing mistrust and abuse by fellow marines who accuse him of lying), he starts having conversations with a female cosmonaut who died over 1000 years ago, and people are starting to go missing on the station. With only a psychologist to help him, things quickly begin to deteriorate on the station. Something is very wrong on the U-Star Coast City and he is beginning to suspect he is a sacrifice to something very wrong and very alien.

The beginning of the story was told in a very clunky way: the main character describing his big battle in a way that sounded like an 18 year old on speed, then random scenes that I still don't know where they place in the book. As well, there is a large info dump that really doesn't segue into the story seamlessly. It's all a mess until about 15% into the book, and then things pick up. Honestly, I would have preferred the entire beginning jettisoned so I could have just enjoyed Ida's story (I really wish the character had been given a different name/nickname - every time I read Ida, I expected a woman).

Once the story gets moving, then we have the fun mystery to follow - with clues dropped in (sometimes heavily and too strongly) to flesh out the mystery. The 'bad guy' is pretty obvious since she has a monologue in the beginning. So don't expect any big surprises in that light. But just how all the characters came to be on the station (and why) is the reason why you follow the plot.

Unfortunately, once the reveals start happening at the end, it all becomes very anticlimactic. For one, the 'villain' suddenly becomes powerless and is overpowered by one person (when they had free reign of evil for most of the story before then). As well, the evil entity ends up pretty much being a pissed off female (no real spoiler here since we meet her in the beginning chapter) who got dumped by her husband. And then tying her into Japanese mythology kind of really killed it for me. When an alien starts referring to herself by some foreigner's terms, you really don't get a feeling that she's all that powerful. Especially since that particular mythology crosses many cultures: Japanese: Izanagi and Izanami, Mayan: Itzamna and Ixchel, Indian: Savitri and Satyavan, Sumerian: Innana, and Greek: Eurydice or Persephone. So why settle on just one?

I was more interested in the mechanical spiders that were eating up worlds; but they were decorations to the plot and not really featured in the story at all. Reading between the lines, this book should have been a sweet short story about the romance of the broken down Captain and the long dead Cosmonaut Ludmilla and how she will save him. But that was fleshed out into a full novel at the expense of the love story, so we ended up with a lot of muddle in the middle that didn't need to be there. Especially at the end, with the bad character reminding me far too much of Gozer from the first Ghostbusters movie and side characters who ended up being somewhat comical in their reactions to "Gozer".

For a 'haunted house' type of book, I found I wasn't scared. Curious to see how the book will end but no racing heart or 'don't turn out the lights at night' scared. I think that was because characters met their demise usually by staring at the 'bad guy' and then screaming. Perhaps that's why the book felt so cinematic - it cuts the corners that movie directors have to in order not to show too much. But with a non visceral medium like a book, there is so much that can be done to scare the heck out of you using only words. That just didn't happen here.

Despite the decent middle (not scary or gory - more of a thriller), I have to rate this at a solid 3 stars due to the confusing beginning and problematic ending. Not a bad read, decently written, but somehow disappointing in the end.

Reviewed from an ARC.

[Kam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Humans don’t like the unknown: it works against every single instinct evolution has built into us. If we can’t explain something, we find a way to do so based on pre-existing constructs: that’s why every culture has its myths and legends, and why we have religion and science. Humans can’t help but ask questions, and we will find answers to those questions, somehow, some way. However, once we settle on a preferred construct, a preferred answer to a question, it’s very hard to change our minds when another possible answer comes along—even if that new answer might be a better response to the question in the first place. Trying to accept new answers, new approaches, can lead to conflict, and that’s not something the human brain likes any more than it likes not knowing.

One the greatest unknowns still left to our imagination is outer space. Though humanity has been looking at the night sky almost since it had the capacity to question, we’ve only really been exploring it for a very short amount of time; even then, we’re not doing the exploration ourselves, instead sending out proxies like probes and robots because outer space is far too harsh an environment for our species to survive. Therefore, outer space is prime fodder for writers who like to speculate on the nature of the unknown: that is, science fiction writers, and horror writers. And ever since H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos became popular, there is significant overlap between the two.

Adam Christopher’s novel The Burning Dark is an example of that overlap, though it doesn’t look like it at first. Humanity is currently at war with a bio-mechanical alien race called the Spiders (so named because they look like Earth’s arachnids), and they vary in size from “cargo transport” to “star”. They are energy-devourers, and the largest ones, called Mother Spiders, are capable of destroying entire solar systems in very short order, sucking dry each and every star and planet they come across. The war hasn’t been going well for humanity, and desperate measures need to be taken.

Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland—Ida for short—took one of those measures, and came out of it with a robotic knee and a medal that says he’s a hero. One would think that after such excellent service, he’d be able to retire in peace, but that’s not the case. Instead, he’s sent to do one last job: decommissioning a research station orbiting a strange star called Shadow. While there, he learns that things aren’t quite right: key people are missing, the station’s systems malfunction at the oddest and sometimes deadliest of times, and Shadow’s light makes communication with the rest of the galaxy all but impossible. But there’s something else, too: something that lurks just on the edges of the senses, both human and machine. And it wants out.

One of the most fun things about starting a novel is trying to figure out what it’s all about, and infer where it’s going to go from the first few chapters. The reader’s first guess isn’t always the right one, but the first few chapters go a long way towards laying the groundwork for what to expect—and what not to expect.

The first few chapters of The Burning Dark, though, are unusual, mostly because they don’t fit together in any way that makes sense. For example, the very first chapter the reader encounters is titled “Yomi”, which opens with the following:

In the shadowland of the dead, she sat and cried for her husband, but the prison was sealed and she could not leave and nobody could hear her.

The shadows surrounded her, swarming her like living, breathing creatures. The shadows caressed her skin, holding the rotting flesh onto her bones. Things crawled over her and ate her flesh, but the shadows kept her firm, kept her whole as the things ate, and ate, and ate.

It was too late.

Readers with a firm grasp of world mythology will likely recognise the source of the above, but even knowing where it comes from doesn’t make it feel any less out of place. After all, most readers who pick up this novel expect sci-fi, not mythology or fantasy.

The next chapter, titled “The Relief of Tau Retore”, fits better into reader expectations, beginning thusly:

This is how the shit went down. Lemme tell you about it, all right.

We came out of quick space at oh-fifteen, which, even pushing warp as we were, was still too damn late. And when we popped back into the universe above Tau Retore, there was already a gap in the arrowhead. One ship hadn’t made it—engine burnout in quick space, or some such. That can happen, and the loss—hell, any loss—was a shock. But we had a job to do first and my crew was fast, filling the gap without even needing an order, sliding the pack of cruisers together just so. It was pretty sweet, lemme tell you.

The tone is very much that of an old war veteran telling a favourite story, thus raising expectations that this will be a military sci-fi novel, and told from the first-person perspective. At this point, I thought that things were going to be on the up-and-up, since I really liked the narrator’s voice in this chapter, and hoped it would be the one telling the rest of the story.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. After “The Relief of Tau Retore” the novel goes to third-person limited and more or less stays there, telling the story of what happens on the U-Star Coast City through the eyes of a specific set of characters. This is where the novel takes on its true character: that of a horror novel set in space, along the lines of the movie Event Horizon and the Dead Space video game series.

Now, these shifts in genre aren’t a bad thing, as a rule: after all, a writer isn’t limited to the conventions of one genre if the conventions of another suit their purpose better. But this also implies that the writer is capable of making those genres play nice with each other: a skill some writers have in spades, and others don’t.

Unfortunately, Christopher is one of the latter. Though The Burning Dark is, at its core, a horror novel, it is still wedded to the conventions of sci-fi by virtue of its setting. This means a certain amount of world-building is not only expected, but absolutely necessary. This is where Christopher fails: he doesn’t do the necessary world-building to ground the story’s key elements, thus causing the entire novel to suffer.

The first thing the lack of world-building does is undermine the nature of the monster at the heart of this novel. Christopher tries to obscure the monster’s plans, and it does work, to a degree, but when those motives are revealed the lack of supporting world-building makes them feel shallow and uninteresting. It also doesn’t help that it’s never really explained how such an entity could exist in the first place: there is some hand-waving done in appropriate places, but when world-building is so thin on the ground, such hand-waving breaks any suspension of disbelief a reader may have—if the reader even had any, given that there’s no world-building to actually help create a suspension of disbelief. When one ties all this in with the fact that the monster is revealed far too early—as early as the first third of the novel, but readers who know the source of the content for “Yomi” will be able to pinpoint exactly when they identify the monster—the novel’s scare factor just falls apart at the seams.

The lack of solid world-building also undermines the characters. It’s near-impossible to get attached to any of them because the reader doesn’t know who they are and where they’ve come from. Some of their backstories are told because they are pertinent to the novel’s overall plot, but beyond that there’s nothing else to encourage the reader to invest in them emotionally. This also undermines whatever scare factor the novel might have, because if the reader isn’t attached to the characters, then they won’t care what happens to them, which means it’s hard to feel scared for them.

If there’s one good thing about this novel, it’s the concept. The Spider War itself sounds utterly intriguing, and if Christopher had chosen to write a different story with that as the focus, the novel could have been a different beast entirely. I can easily imagine how The Burning Dark could be a vastly different book, if one eliminated the Event Horizon-style horror storyline: a story about a war veteran on the verge of retirement, sent to a distant outpost for one last low-stakes assignment, only to find himself suddenly on the front lines of the war he thought he’d left behind. True, that doesn’t sound like a very original plot, but it would certainly be more fun to read. With enough room for characterisation and world-building, I think it could even become something truly spectacular.

Unfortunately, that’s not the novel Christopher wrote, and the reader, therefore, must make-do with what they have been given. The sad thing is that what they have been given isn’t really much to look at.

Overall, The Burning Dark doesn’t quite live up to whatever potential it initially has. There are parts of it that are fun to read, but even those parts can’t rescue it from its flaws: in particular, a lack of really supportive world-building. This lack of world-building creates issues in characterisation and plot that make it difficult to feel really scared by, of, or for anything or anyone in this novel—which is sad, because this is supposed to be a horror novel, and therefore it should be scary, but it isn’t. It’s one saving grace is that it’s interesting concept, and had Christopher chosen to eliminate the horror story plot line and just go for a straight-up military sci-fi novel, this could have been a far, far more interesting book.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally reviewed on Just A Guy That Likes To Read: http://justaguythatlikes2read.blogspo...

Aboard a space station in the midst of being decommissioned, ageing fleet veteran war hero Ida Cleveland is assigned, minus the decoration and glory that should come with having saved a planet. His past heroics dubbed lies by the skeleton staff marines counting down the hours to their eventual departure from the derelict Coast City. Faced with unwelcome hostility and a deep sense of isolation, he forms a bond with the reclusive Izanami, a young woman who shares Ida’s obsession with a mysterious signal from afar.

Said signal appears to be from a long dead cosmonaut and only comes about as a result of Ida’s tinkering with a space radio. Little does he know, this seemingly innocuous communication is tied to a much larger mystery, one that goes outside the boundaries of sci-fi and into the blood curdling world of suspenseful horror.

Author Adam Christopher (EMPIRE STATE, HANG WIRE) envelopes the reader in a shroud of atmospheric darkness that pays homage to the horror/sci-fi mash genre of fiction as well as brining a little bit of action and thriller elements aboard the creepy deep space station.

What started out as a space opera of sorts fuelled by a world breaking battle in the skies above a planet in danger of being consumed by larger than imaginable mechanical alien spiders evolves into a much more interesting and deeply engrossing tale of survival, horror, and military conspiracy.

Being on a sci-fi kick at the moment, THE BURNING DARK ticked all the right boxes for me. I would’ve liked more page time dedicated to characters like Zia Hollywood (a rich VIP who arrives at the station as a guest under somewhat questionable rationale) and Serra (a psi-marine whose back-story warranted further elaboration) but that’s a minor comment in what looks to be a very promising and unique series from Adam Christopher.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it from start to finish with its homages to the tv soap opera Dark Shadows, Bloom County and DC Comics characters the Green Lantern, Hal Jordan and the Deadman, Boston Brand. Shares some common ground with the classic SF film "Event Horizon". A spiffy Gothic horror SF thriller! I hope we don't have to wait another year for the next book of the trilogy.

The story is heavily tinged with J-horror from the Funayurei (vengeful sea ghosts.) Except they're space ghosts here, and I don't mean the Alex Toth cartoon character. The characters are real and act real and are fully formed. This is not a hard SF novel in any way, so don't let the science fiction aspect put you off the book. This universe is much like Star Fleet from Star Trek, artificial gravity, f.t.l. and etc. (which is really fantasy) but add in the bugs from Starship Troopers except here they are intelligent spider machines.

Heavy gothic atmosphere comes off nicely. Also of note is the Carcosa, the lead character's ship, named aptly after... "Carcosa is a fictional city in the Ambrose Bierce short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1891). In Bierce's story, the ancient and mysterious city is barely described, and is viewed only in hindsight (after its destruction) by a character who once lived there."

"The city was later used more extensively in Robert W. Chambers' book of horror short stories published in 1895 entitled "King in Yellow"."

[The pair of quotes come from wikipedia.]

[Rebecca]

This is a classic ghost story...in space. It's actually really impressive how well Christopher manages to meld the "vengeful ancient ghost from legends" (including all the standard horror tropes of deceased loved ones reappearing, whispering voices, disappearing minor characters, cold and sudden darkness, serious mind-fuckery, and so on) with a space opera derelict research station. You can't really decide how reliable a narrator the protagonist is until almost the end of the novel, which just increases the level of creepiness--something is definitely going horribly wrong, but how much is in his head and how much isn't is left up for debate for quite some time. I appreciated how Christopher manages to tie his mystical manifestations into the science fiction trappings through clever world-building. That said, the initial chronology is kind of needlessly confusing.

[Kdawg91 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did you ever a movie called Event Horizon? (a steaming big pile of crap) Well it sucked, but the base idea was kinda cool. The Burning Dark is what would happen if you took a idea like that and made it rock. I have seen several not positive reviews, but I loved every page, it was superb. I enjoyed the characters, the world and the creep factor was up to like 14 or something. This would make a killer film, and I look forward the rest of the Spider War. Go read this.

[Tyrus Shirley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The overall order of this book could have been tweaked as some parts were rather confusing as it was read, but as you continue reading things begin to fall into place and by the end it all makes sense. The story as a whole is exciting and is definitely worth the read!

[Mark Lindberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland, called Ida, was a hero. While he was captain, he led a fleet into battle against the spiders, AIs than can eat planets, and even stars. And, against all odds, he won the battle. Now, left with an achy robotic knee as a memento of the battle, Ida has been sent to oversee the last stages of the disassembling of the U-Star Coast City, a Fleet space station. He doesn’t know why he’s been sent to the station, and neither do the remaining crew members, none of whom have heard of his exploits, which should be legend, even in this backwater system. Ida is very frustrated by these events.

The U-Star Coast city sits in the same solar system as the star Shadow. That’s why it was put here in the first place–to study the strange, potentially deadly, purple star. The light from the star begins to mess with Ida almost as soon as he is in the system, and soon it shuts down the standard lightspeed communications, and appears to be playing havoc with the station’s internal systems, particularly those for lighting and atmosphere. This gives the station an eerie feel, and sets almost everyone, who, to the last man, want to be done with this job and gone, on edge.

Cut off from the rest of the galaxy, with the crew beginning to hate him, Ida turns to his hobbies, creating a radio that he quickly uses to listen to illegal frequencies. The only problem is, he doesn’t know why they’re illegal. When he finds a hypnotizing distress call echoing on one of the frequencies, he becomes obsessed with the origin. Things just get stranger from there, as crew start to disappear, and the mysteries, such as the location of the station’s commandant, seem to multiply.

It took me nearly a month to read this book, but that’s my fault. I simply haven’t had much time to read lately. I enjoyed the book. It’s not my usual fare; I’m much more into fantasy than sci-fi, and longer rather than shorter books (At 336 pages, this is by no means a short book. I’m just used to 900+). Never the less, I enjoyed this one. It proves that good writing transcends genres, and can be enjoyed regardless of what your tastes are.

This book is not without its flaws, though. The characters often feel one dimensional; every hobby and bit of back-story that I can remember is only there because it serves the plot in some way, and I don’t know anything about the characters apart from that.

The characters can also be dense, sometimes. There were parts of the book where I was frustrated at the characters because I had realized something of what was going on, and the characters did not for another fifty or hundred pages. However, much of this may have been because of the way the book jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint, including teaser viewpoints that show some of what is going on behind the scenes, or something that happened years ago that will be instrumental to the plot in a few chapters.

However, the characters, despite their flaws, are also convincingly real. While I would have loved to see more back story and quirks from them, I thought they were psychologically well done. Not only do they have an authentic gritty feel to them, the sense of impending despair that sets in as the star’s light affects them, and other events happen in the second half of the book, is very convincing. There were several times, when I stopped reading, that I had to remind myself that it was the characters in mental anguish, not myself, and that I needed to relax. I love it when a book can immerse me so fully in the character’s mentalities that I have to remind myself that I’m not them.

The pacing of the book seemed a hair slow, but keep in mind, I read it over the course of the month, and I’m used to reading 1000+ page books in 3 days. Given the length of the book, and the amount of action, I’m going to say this was a misperception on my part. I’m guessing that if I’d read this book at my normal pace, and it had taken me a day, or at most two, then I would have thought it very quickly paced. The tension throughout is constant, and there aren’t dull moments. However, because of the number of mysteries and amount of confusion, I would recommend against reading too hastily, and instead reading a little more carefully.

The ending was satisfying and well fore-shadowed, with no deus-ex-machina or other surprises that can ruin endings. I liked it, and felt that it held the book together well, making the read worth it.

Overall, I’d give this book 4 of 5 stars, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading, if you can handle the darker side of things, as the book is quite dark. Also, a content warning: Lots of swearing, and while the descriptions not graphic, there is at least implied sex/nudity.

Original review from my blog http://mentalmegalodon.wordpress.com/...

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow burn, a little too slow in the middle, but when it finally gets going it turned out ok. Felt like it really wants to be turned into a movie - when I added the missing creepy music/moody lighting in my mind I could see the atmosphere it was going for.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally published at SFFWorld.

The Burning Dark (Spider Wars #1) by Adam Christopher is the first book in a new series from the author. Venturing into full-on sci-fi, The Burning Dark marks a departure from his previous –and well received – urban fantasy/superhero novels. While I have yet to read any of Christopher’s previous works, The Burning Dark does raise a very prominent question for me about the author: why the praise?

Sent out of the way to the Shadow star system and the U-Star Coast City space station to oversee its decommissioning, Captain Abraham Idaho ‘Ida’ Cleveland finds he is treated as an outcast by those aboard, while the serving Commandant has apparently left and in charge is King, the provost marshal. With a strong resentment towards him and disbelief in his achievements, of which there is no official record, Ida finds himself growing distant from the crew. While tinkering with electronics he stumbles across a mysterious transmission from the past on the banned subspace channels, and that is only the beginning of his troubles…

It’s clear to see that the ideas Adam Christopher explores in The Burning Dark are multi-layered, with nothing ever being quite what it seems. However, this is also its downfall. While the early parts of the novel are a fairly straight-forward introduction to the U-Star Coast City, Ida, and all aboard, there is always an underlying and unsettling feeling seeping through the words. While part of this is very much to do with the story Christopher is telling, other parts can be attributed to the seemingly endless exposition, internal monologuing, and general clunkiness of the prose.

The parts that work, while few and far between, really do work. There was more than one occasion where I felt a chill down my spine, goose bumps on my skin, and a very real sense of uneasiness washing over me. The tried and tested formula of an almost deserted space station and strange occurrences really do pay dividends when done right. Unfortunately, these were perhaps the only parts of the novel that stood out as memorable and a step above the ordinary.

The setting Christopher has created is an interesting one. With humanity under attack by the strange Spider species, a seemingly artificial entity that attack and devours whole worlds at a time, there is plenty to get excited about. However, this part of the novel is very much relegated to Ida’s history of a battle against the Spiders, with few other in-depth examinations of this war. It’s always made known, but never really explored, which is a shame as some more detail on this aspect would have gone a long way to improve the world-building.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of The Burning Dark, as strange as it sounds, is the way everything seems to slot into place towards the end. While what happens is interesting in itself, but because there is little foreshadowing of events it all seems to come out of nowhere. One minute we’re wondering what the explanation for everything is, the next we’ve been told everything we need to know and, to be honest, it’s not something I could have put together from the plot up to that point.

In summary, The Burning Dark was a disappointment. There is potential within the pages for a great novel, but the execution is below par. Based on this novel alone I can’t see myself reading any future novels in this series, or anything else the author has to offer.

[Brick Marlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another great read by Adam Christopher! Now onto another one of his fine novels...

[Kev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! What a pleasant surprise! From the blurb, I expected a military science fiction story with some kind of conspiracy thrown in... which I guess is what this is; but it's so much more. It's more a thriller set on a space-station, with a bit of conspiracy in the background.

I had just finished reading the latest Alien novel, and while those stories are supposed to be scary and space-horror, it didn't really have that suspense that makes a good thriller. The Burning Dark more than made up for that. The suspense consumed me!

I don't know if this is the first in a planned series or universe; but the story wraps up neatly at the end, albeit a bit too quickly, making it a perfect stand-along novel. Though there's so much world-building within the pages that to leave this universe alone would be a shame.

Similar novels would be Eric Brown's Weird Space series, though that series has more gore/ick-factor.

The Burning Dark is a good read! An eARC was provided to me for review through NetGalley.

[Nico · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC provided by NetGalley

The Burning Dark is a brilliant SciFi, Horror mix, with scenes that makes your hair stand on end. I'm not an avid reader of the horror genre, but here I had a really fun time and it fit very well in the scifi context. I enjoy this kind rather than some supernatural horror in an urban setting.
The worldbuilding was very well done. The whole background to the world with enormous, planet killing spider machines was very intriguing and I was a little bumped we didn't get to learn a bit more about the conflict. Hopefully Adam Christopher gets back to this universe in another book.


The story is told in a good pace and flows from one spooky scene to another. Especially the POV changes were exceptionally clever. We mainly follow the view of Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland, but at certain points we get to see other revealing scenes on board the space station. This edge in knowledge then adds even more suspense when we switch back to Idaho's view.
With a lot of surprising twist and turns it is a real entertaining story, only the ending seemed a bit anticlimactic and rushed. Well worth a read!

[Darren Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book.

I am giving this book 4 stars instead of 3 because after reading 'The Overnighter' (see previous review of that book), it was a breath of fresh air to see horror done right. There was so much more anticipation in this book than in 'The Overnighter'. The author let the environment and the character's insecurities spread the tension around. I didn't need to be told that thinks were creepy and ominous, they just were. The characters were well written there was solid tension between them.

The book started out with a pretty unique premise and though in the end it was similar to Event Horizon or The Black Hole, it stood on its own feet next to those and gave us a most entertaining, page turning read.

If I had written this up sooner after finishing it than I am, I would have more positive things to say. It delivered what it promised on the book jacket, washed the bad taste of 'The Overnighter' out of my mouth and restored horror's reputation as a worthy read.

[Adeline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh boy, I really wanted to like this one. The premise sounded like this could be a really cool horror sci-fi book. Sadly, it wasn't, because I didn't really feel the horror. There were a few moments that were building up to something, but then just fell flat for me. Somehow the sci-fi setting felt unnecessary because the world building was really weak. I mean, there are these giant "spiders" that devour whole worlds and then the only thing the author does with them is to use one of them to defeat the villain. No explanation of where they came from or what they are. And then mixing japanese mythology into it was just weird.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give this novel 5 more stars. I could not put it down! May I suggest an alternative title of "The Creeping Dread"? I'm still getting goosebumps.

Set on a far-flung space station in the last stages of disassembly, this book quickly came to remind me of the movie "Event Horizon."

I don't want to give anything away, but I will say this is one of those rare books that I couldn't stop reading, but didn't want to finish because it was so good. Gripping, creepy, action-y...

I rarely get spooked by books, but this one did it.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

[Eleanor With Cats · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa.

Katana-wielding ghost queen of demons is fought by time-stranded female Soviet cosmonaut, the cyborg hero-captain abandoned by his own fleet who loves her, an ex-Black Ops space marine cut by the guilt of his family's deaths, a female Santería practitioner who is also the best psi-marine in the Fleet, and a glamorous reality media star. Did I get that right?

Oh yeah, and giant psychic alien robots who are eating our planets. Shaped like spiders.

Nice.

Very, very atmospheric. (That means creepy.)