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Tusk
Hiding in a starship crawlspace was not part of Larsen’s normal day. But then—what was a day in space when something wasn't trying to kill you? Ordinarily, he would be the one running towards the issue to fix it. Punctured hull, engine failure, comms problem—that was his normal fare. When the problem has a gun, well, that's when you find yourself a starship crawlspace and hide. At least until you figure out what to do. He was only lucky he had Silvers with him. Silvers was security, had his own gun and had so far kept them both alive. Lying on a couch in the tranquillity of the resuscitation suite, a cool refreshing drink and soft new skin. The colony fleet, having arrived within the target planetary system of Hayford b had begun waking its crews from stasis. The UTS Endeavour, UTS Indianapolis and UTS Intrepid were slowing for orbit and preparing for the colonisation effort. Only, the UTS Intrepid wasn't responding. Dawn—the UTS Endeavour's AI—and Clayton, the ship’s captain, giving a briefing on the mission. It's a comms issue, Clayton had said. Fix the comms array and find out what's going on over there. And that's what they were doing. Finding out what was going on aboard the UTS Intrepid. Comms array? I can fix that, he thought to himself. He looked at Silvers taking an ammo, grenades, knife. He performed his own utiliplex multi-tool, utility belt, done. His heart sank. It was turning out to be more than your normal dangerous day as an engineer.
361 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 21, 2016
30 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
Nathan M. Hurst
3 books63 followersNathan M. Hurst was grew up in Ringwood, on the borders of the New Forest in the UK, but after extensive and excessive adventuring, settled near Epping Forest on the outskirts of London with his wife and young son. He has worked as a software developer and technical manager for many years whilst maintaining an avid enthusiasm for aviation and astronautics. Consuming science-fiction and adventure stories of all varieties from an early age his love for books turned into a passion for writing.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 4, 2019
Serviceable wannabe-hard SF.
Characters are flat, and there are way too many of them. I swear some characters just pop into existence when convenient (Rivers at the very end??). It's way too wordy in totally unnecessary places, characters keep having long internal scenes/monologues or exposition in the middle of action scenes, it all doesn't flow very well. At no point was a drawn into the setting and felt like it all made sense.
The overall structure (chapter/story structure) is actually really good, except for the very end, where the author wraps up a ton of loose ends into a ball, sets fire to it, and tosses it out the window. Talking about loose ends, there's a lot of very strange plot holes, like the author just made up the plot as he went along, and forgot about some inconveniences. Also, there's quite a few editing mistakes and simple typos, more towards the end, reinforcing the feeling that the end of the book was rushed.
Generally I wouldn't have a problem giving a book like this 3 stars, since I, well, I like SF. However, Tusk (named, for some reason, after a shuttle that exists for about 1/3 of the book), commits the cardinal sin of being dark and depressive while being boring and mundane. The depression is mostly due to a prologue that is probably meant to be mysterious and intriguing, but rather just sets a tone of fatalism and encroaching madness. Grim fatalism in itself can be cool, there's a lot of nice movies like this (Pandorum from 2009 is one that especially comes to mind when thinking about Tusk), but here it just feels like a slog. I just disliked the whole Travis/Dawn story, it feels contrived and disconnected from the story. And when this, along with pretty much every other story element, is resolved and "twisted" in five pages at the very end, I just can't help but wonder what was the point of it all.
There's one scene I really liked and stood out, Hopefulness and wonder, half-sensible explanations, cultures colliding. Wish there was more of this stuff, but that's clearly not the kind of book Hurst wanted to write. Rather, he seems to want a story where people commit and experience cruelties for no reason whatsoever.
Not feeling any desire to read more of this.
Characters are flat, and there are way too many of them. I swear some characters just pop into existence when convenient (Rivers at the very end??). It's way too wordy in totally unnecessary places, characters keep having long internal scenes/monologues or exposition in the middle of action scenes, it all doesn't flow very well. At no point was a drawn into the setting and felt like it all made sense.
The overall structure (chapter/story structure) is actually really good, except for the very end, where the author wraps up a ton of loose ends into a ball, sets fire to it, and tosses it out the window. Talking about loose ends, there's a lot of very strange plot holes, like the author just made up the plot as he went along, and forgot about some inconveniences. Also, there's quite a few editing mistakes and simple typos, more towards the end, reinforcing the feeling that the end of the book was rushed.
Generally I wouldn't have a problem giving a book like this 3 stars, since I, well, I like SF. However, Tusk (named, for some reason, after a shuttle that exists for about 1/3 of the book), commits the cardinal sin of being dark and depressive while being boring and mundane. The depression is mostly due to a prologue that is probably meant to be mysterious and intriguing, but rather just sets a tone of fatalism and encroaching madness. Grim fatalism in itself can be cool, there's a lot of nice movies like this (Pandorum from 2009 is one that especially comes to mind when thinking about Tusk), but here it just feels like a slog. I just disliked the whole Travis/Dawn story, it feels contrived and disconnected from the story. And when this, along with pretty much every other story element, is resolved and "twisted" in five pages at the very end, I just can't help but wonder what was the point of it all.
There's one scene I really liked and stood out, Hopefulness and wonder, half-sensible explanations, cultures colliding. Wish there was more of this stuff, but that's clearly not the kind of book Hurst wanted to write. Rather, he seems to want a story where people commit and experience cruelties for no reason whatsoever.
Not feeling any desire to read more of this.
November 16, 2018
Rating
Review
*** This review originally appeared on Out of this World Reviews. ***
On the surface, Tusk by Nathan M. Hurst follows a familiar formula: Earth is dying and the human race with it unless an ambitious plan to colonize a distant planet succeeds. Any experienced science fiction reader has been here before, with an Earth that has been used and abused by its dominant species to the point where it is fast becoming uninhabitable. The only way to save the human race is therefore to travel across the stars to start over on an uninhabited planet. Tusk doesn’t really break from this formula at any point, but it does throw in enough curve balls, mysteries, and a fair level of suspense that it’s an enjoyable, fun read that kept me turning the pages.
Humans are able to travel vast distances across space only because of the pioneering work of one scientist who develops sophisticated cloning technology and, even more impressive, a way to transfer the consciousness of an individual from one body to another. This, in effect, means humankind has achieved immortality; as a person’s body reaches the end of its life, that person’s consciousness can be transferred to a new, young body and theoretically live forever. While the philosophical or religious implications of this are never really mentioned nor explored, I really didn’t miss a deep dive in this direction. Instead we get a practical means by which those onboard the three ships sent by Earth can travel indefinitely until they finally reach their destination. That destination is a place called Hayford b, a system that contains a livable but uninhabited planet ready and waiting for the colonists arrival.
Of course things aren’t what they seem and so the first crew to begin awakening discovers one of their sister ships, the UTS Intrepid, unresponsive. They soon learn that all comms are jammed around the ship and that, even worse, she’s been boarded by an unknown party.
I won’t go into a lot of plot details because it’s too difficult not to give something away, but suffice to say the Intrepid’s boarders do not have the best interests of the colonists in mind. Throw in some additional sub-plots, more than a few battles, and a big assumption that gets turned on its head, and you’ve got a pretty enjoyable science fiction story to look forward to.
The writing is good and concise in a way that doesn’t waste a lot of words or spend a lot of time with ‘filler’ descriptive prose; you’re going to get a lot of straight up drama, action, and suspense with Tusk. As for the characters, there are a lot of them, which, on one hand, is to be expected given the size of the colonization ships. While it’s sometimes difficult to keep them all straight, the variety allows the author to explore many different aspects of the mission and the various storylines. The AI is especially intriguing as a character. Her depth was refreshing and somewhat unexpected.
All things considered, I liked Tusk enough to give it four rockets. As mentioned, the main plot is not original, but the writing, characters, and storylines all combine to present a science fiction novel that will intrigue and draw you in. One final note: Mr. Hurst contacted me via Twitter to request a review of Tusk. I obliged by purchasing my own copy of the Kindle edition of the book. I have since also purchased the next book in the series, Clarion, which I’ve added to my TBR list and will review sometime in the near future.
Review
*** This review originally appeared on Out of this World Reviews. ***
On the surface, Tusk by Nathan M. Hurst follows a familiar formula: Earth is dying and the human race with it unless an ambitious plan to colonize a distant planet succeeds. Any experienced science fiction reader has been here before, with an Earth that has been used and abused by its dominant species to the point where it is fast becoming uninhabitable. The only way to save the human race is therefore to travel across the stars to start over on an uninhabited planet. Tusk doesn’t really break from this formula at any point, but it does throw in enough curve balls, mysteries, and a fair level of suspense that it’s an enjoyable, fun read that kept me turning the pages.
Humans are able to travel vast distances across space only because of the pioneering work of one scientist who develops sophisticated cloning technology and, even more impressive, a way to transfer the consciousness of an individual from one body to another. This, in effect, means humankind has achieved immortality; as a person’s body reaches the end of its life, that person’s consciousness can be transferred to a new, young body and theoretically live forever. While the philosophical or religious implications of this are never really mentioned nor explored, I really didn’t miss a deep dive in this direction. Instead we get a practical means by which those onboard the three ships sent by Earth can travel indefinitely until they finally reach their destination. That destination is a place called Hayford b, a system that contains a livable but uninhabited planet ready and waiting for the colonists arrival.
Of course things aren’t what they seem and so the first crew to begin awakening discovers one of their sister ships, the UTS Intrepid, unresponsive. They soon learn that all comms are jammed around the ship and that, even worse, she’s been boarded by an unknown party.
I won’t go into a lot of plot details because it’s too difficult not to give something away, but suffice to say the Intrepid’s boarders do not have the best interests of the colonists in mind. Throw in some additional sub-plots, more than a few battles, and a big assumption that gets turned on its head, and you’ve got a pretty enjoyable science fiction story to look forward to.
The writing is good and concise in a way that doesn’t waste a lot of words or spend a lot of time with ‘filler’ descriptive prose; you’re going to get a lot of straight up drama, action, and suspense with Tusk. As for the characters, there are a lot of them, which, on one hand, is to be expected given the size of the colonization ships. While it’s sometimes difficult to keep them all straight, the variety allows the author to explore many different aspects of the mission and the various storylines. The AI is especially intriguing as a character. Her depth was refreshing and somewhat unexpected.
All things considered, I liked Tusk enough to give it four rockets. As mentioned, the main plot is not original, but the writing, characters, and storylines all combine to present a science fiction novel that will intrigue and draw you in. One final note: Mr. Hurst contacted me via Twitter to request a review of Tusk. I obliged by purchasing my own copy of the Kindle edition of the book. I have since also purchased the next book in the series, Clarion, which I’ve added to my TBR list and will review sometime in the near future.
June 21, 2016
I loved this book! The detail is such that you believe he is talking about real stuff that already exists. I'm no scientist, so I can't judge, but it gives an authenticity to the book. The characters are well drawn, just sometimes a bit hard to keep track of because there are a lot, but I don't see how he could have any less. The book has some delicious twists (no spoilers) that made me say, 'Oh! I though this was a book about this, but now it's about that. That's really clever!' I will definitely be buying the sequel. Highly recommended.
June 10, 2016
Some really interesting ideas unpicked in this book, especially the narrative theme regarding the mental state of an AI, its ability to suffer and morality; thought-provoking and very topical. There is a high level of technical detail which is very well described throughout. Recommended!
April 19, 2020
The description of this book did not prepare me for the action once it got cooking, couldn't put it down. It could have used a better editor though, some unnecessary passages about how things work and backstories that slow it down in places.
October 9, 2020
I’ll try to describe my experience with this book (its good and "coulda been better" points) without getting into the actual story, so as not to spoil any of the interesting plot points and twists.
I picked up Tusk (book one of "A Sol Protocol") on the basis of the writing style as seen in the prologue preview, the reader reviews of it on Amazon, and the overall story synopsis which sounded interesting to me. The writing style was very readable and the author describes things well, painting a good mental picture of the setting, the action and the characters. The writing style and the plot kept me going, but the complexity in the telling of the tale was a bit of a distraction.
The book's chapters aren't numbered and there is no table of contents. With the exception of a prologue, the chapters are only “titled" by the name of the character whose point of view we will be viewing it from, so several chapters have the same name as we revisit the POV of some of them. This technique did help to keep track of which character we are seeing through, as there were a lot of POV characters, although I think there were a few places where the POV slipped out of the character who was telling that part. While we are being introduced to the many characters, several go into a daydream about their past and then "Snap out of it," back to the current events of the story, in order to deliver some of their backstory history. Some of this is useful and some seemed like it wandered a bit. The technique worked well enough, but it may have been used a few too many times. Overall, I think it would have strengthened the story if it was told from just a few POV characters - maybe even combining a few characters into one to reduce the number of names the reader has to track.
There are several plot lines running parallel in the book which made the story more interesting than a simple one plot-line story. There are a lot of surprising plot twists and character motivation turns that are introduced in the story. However, I personally felt like the story bogged down a bit in the middle. We hear the POV of several characters telling their side of some of the same events, which felt like a re-hashing of segments of the story already covered. Fewer points of view or fewer characters could have helped this. Once the initial inciting incident problem seems to be resolved, the plot expands a bit into more interesting areas at about the 2/3 point. I think if that slow part of the story had been streamlined, and the number of POV characters had been condensed, the plot could have been explored in more detail and the main characters defined better. Several characters whose personal thoughts and experiences the reader invests time in suddenly die in the story, it made it hard to know which one to invest in as I got to the end of the book. Because there were so many characters to learn about, some of them seemed to blend together into generic characters and I had to go back a few times to be sure which was which.
I never really understood why this book was titled Tusk. The shuttle in the story with that name does not feature greatly in the narrative except near the start as it brings characters to the setting where some of the major action takes place, but the ship itself does not feature that much in the plot compared to the characters which later in the book are in another shuttle which seems to have no name at all.
I gave this a 3 star although I might call it more of a 3.5 rating. The biggest downsides were the too many/extraneous characters issue, the bog down in the middle of the book and the extra shuttles, topics and side characters which I think just added a little too much unneeded narrative.
On the good side, I liked many of the ideas this story explored. The author introduced some unique takes on regularly used sci-fi tropes like AI, colony ships, hibernation, and cloning which made it more interesting than some books that touch those subjects. The changes in the plot kept things interesting except for some of the middle of the book that felt a little slow. The story could have been improved in my opinion would if fewer point of view characters had been used to tell it and if the main characters we end up with at the end had been made clearer to the reader early on. The book ends after wrapping up a few of the major story plot lines, doing a few surprise reveals and twists and introduces some new challenges/problems for the characters that will obviously be pursued in the next book.
The book's storyline interested me enough to go on to the next book in the series. I'm hoping that since the main characters seem to be more clearly defined now, and the scene set, the next book might be worth a read. I hope my critique was not too harsh, I did enjoy the read. I just felt there were some things that could have been done to make it better.
I picked up Tusk (book one of "A Sol Protocol") on the basis of the writing style as seen in the prologue preview, the reader reviews of it on Amazon, and the overall story synopsis which sounded interesting to me. The writing style was very readable and the author describes things well, painting a good mental picture of the setting, the action and the characters. The writing style and the plot kept me going, but the complexity in the telling of the tale was a bit of a distraction.
The book's chapters aren't numbered and there is no table of contents. With the exception of a prologue, the chapters are only “titled" by the name of the character whose point of view we will be viewing it from, so several chapters have the same name as we revisit the POV of some of them. This technique did help to keep track of which character we are seeing through, as there were a lot of POV characters, although I think there were a few places where the POV slipped out of the character who was telling that part. While we are being introduced to the many characters, several go into a daydream about their past and then "Snap out of it," back to the current events of the story, in order to deliver some of their backstory history. Some of this is useful and some seemed like it wandered a bit. The technique worked well enough, but it may have been used a few too many times. Overall, I think it would have strengthened the story if it was told from just a few POV characters - maybe even combining a few characters into one to reduce the number of names the reader has to track.
There are several plot lines running parallel in the book which made the story more interesting than a simple one plot-line story. There are a lot of surprising plot twists and character motivation turns that are introduced in the story. However, I personally felt like the story bogged down a bit in the middle. We hear the POV of several characters telling their side of some of the same events, which felt like a re-hashing of segments of the story already covered. Fewer points of view or fewer characters could have helped this. Once the initial inciting incident problem seems to be resolved, the plot expands a bit into more interesting areas at about the 2/3 point. I think if that slow part of the story had been streamlined, and the number of POV characters had been condensed, the plot could have been explored in more detail and the main characters defined better. Several characters whose personal thoughts and experiences the reader invests time in suddenly die in the story, it made it hard to know which one to invest in as I got to the end of the book. Because there were so many characters to learn about, some of them seemed to blend together into generic characters and I had to go back a few times to be sure which was which.
I never really understood why this book was titled Tusk. The shuttle in the story with that name does not feature greatly in the narrative except near the start as it brings characters to the setting where some of the major action takes place, but the ship itself does not feature that much in the plot compared to the characters which later in the book are in another shuttle which seems to have no name at all.
I gave this a 3 star although I might call it more of a 3.5 rating. The biggest downsides were the too many/extraneous characters issue, the bog down in the middle of the book and the extra shuttles, topics and side characters which I think just added a little too much unneeded narrative.
On the good side, I liked many of the ideas this story explored. The author introduced some unique takes on regularly used sci-fi tropes like AI, colony ships, hibernation, and cloning which made it more interesting than some books that touch those subjects. The changes in the plot kept things interesting except for some of the middle of the book that felt a little slow. The story could have been improved in my opinion would if fewer point of view characters had been used to tell it and if the main characters we end up with at the end had been made clearer to the reader early on. The book ends after wrapping up a few of the major story plot lines, doing a few surprise reveals and twists and introduces some new challenges/problems for the characters that will obviously be pursued in the next book.
The book's storyline interested me enough to go on to the next book in the series. I'm hoping that since the main characters seem to be more clearly defined now, and the scene set, the next book might be worth a read. I hope my critique was not too harsh, I did enjoy the read. I just felt there were some things that could have been done to make it better.
May 26, 2021
Thoroughly enjoyed! Great storytelling with more clarity of the plot being introduced as the story progresses. Kept me hooked until the end and I look forward to reading the next in the series.
Regarding the writing style: I like the chapters being from the perspective of different people rather than "conventional" chapters. The pitfall of this is that at least once a chapter I have to do a double-take and realise the person speaking is the narrator for that chapter rather than the character mentioned in the last sentence. It's a noticeable style flaw perhaps, but doesn't detract from the whole reading experience.
There are also a lot of characters with full names which is nice for world-building completeness but sometimes unnecessary.
Overall, I would recommend this book.
Regarding the writing style: I like the chapters being from the perspective of different people rather than "conventional" chapters. The pitfall of this is that at least once a chapter I have to do a double-take and realise the person speaking is the narrator for that chapter rather than the character mentioned in the last sentence. It's a noticeable style flaw perhaps, but doesn't detract from the whole reading experience.
There are also a lot of characters with full names which is nice for world-building completeness but sometimes unnecessary.
Overall, I would recommend this book.
July 2, 2021
Well Hurst managed to put everything into this story, space opera, mystery, mind change from body to body, (never grow old again), aliens and insane kooks to undermine the whole project. A threat at every turn with great characters, some get killed off but most survive with an unusual switch in every page. Good Reading.
November 28, 2017
Great story
Lots of action and intrigue with surprising plot twists. I recommend this book to all who enjoys a fast action mystery in space.
Lots of action and intrigue with surprising plot twists. I recommend this book to all who enjoys a fast action mystery in space.
October 26, 2019
Great read
It started off a little slow, but after that, it’s full speed ahead. Heading off to start book two right now
It started off a little slow, but after that, it’s full speed ahead. Heading off to start book two right now
September 22, 2016
Really enjoyed it.
This is not an in-depth review as I'm not really a sci-fi reader but I enjoyed the story, there were lots of unexpected plot corners and twists and some really believable tech, politics etc. I did get a little lost between characters, but this didn't spoil my enjoyment as it was easy to differentiate who was who by scene/location etc.
Ends really satisfyingly but with great expectation for the next one - I'll be reading that as soon as it's available!
This is not an in-depth review as I'm not really a sci-fi reader but I enjoyed the story, there were lots of unexpected plot corners and twists and some really believable tech, politics etc. I did get a little lost between characters, but this didn't spoil my enjoyment as it was easy to differentiate who was who by scene/location etc.
Ends really satisfyingly but with great expectation for the next one - I'll be reading that as soon as it's available!
December 18, 2019
Tusk is an inventive and thrilling frontier space novel. An enjoyingly detailed description of the spaceship's environment and one that definitely benefited from the science as well as the action. This had a well grounded explanation of the 'origins' and back-story, which was worth taking the time over in order to set the main characters. The twists and turns of the plot delivered what a good read should as well as a great setting up for the sequel.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews