The Ghost Line

A crew of hackers are engaged to hijack an abandoned star ship and things go sideways. The plot is basically the sf version of almost every horror movie, but the authors tell the story very well and the ending is surprisingly thoughtful.

While much of the plot of the story is nothing new, what works is less the focus on technology but rather on having to deal with several crises at once and not really solving any of them at all. Yeah, you've got an abandoned spaceship that may or may not be haunted but the real focus is on the people and their reactions to the things they don't know and other outside issues. While nothing is really resolved, my take is that this book is more about how people act and react to the things they can and can't control. A solid three stars.

Strangeness in the stars!

Abandoned star ships that are more than they seem. This premise has been played out before. At this stage I am not interested enough to pursue a future reading of a subsequent tale. The trouble was I felt somewhat abandoned by it all.
It looked like a straight forward job for Saga and her husband Michel. Break into The Martian Queen, a sealed mothballed ship, and help bring it back online. Then other factors enter including their employer and the ship itself. Life becomes something other. There was a reason this ship had been placed away from all.
This novella has great potential but I was not captured.

A NetGalley ARC

[I received an ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]

In general, I have no issues reading novellas, novelettes, or short stories -- except when I find that the length inhibits the storytelling. Unfortunately, I felt that was the case with The Ghost Line.

The story has a fairly abrupt start, as the main characters are approaching the titular ghost line, an abandoned luxury space cruise ship, and from that point on, it never quite gives us the full scope of the story's universe. We don't learn what Earth is like to any real degree in this spacefaring future--beyond a few mentions of advanced technology--and our interactions with its inhabitants are limited to the four-person crew on the mission.

The characters themselves show more aren't poorly written, per se, but they could have been executed better. One of them bordered on a cliche, another acted so aberrantly throughout the story that it made a few of the plot twists a little too obvious. The main character was a little to woe-is-me as well, dwelling on her personal problems so often that it distracted from the main storyline.

The plot itself was interesting, but I didn't find the twists all that original or shocking. I think the length really stunted the story's ability to build suspense, as it kept throwing out answers immediately after the questions were asked. My biggest letdown, honestly, was that the tone wasn't nearly as "horror-tinged" as I was hoping it'd be. I wanted a slow, atmospheric, creepy buildup, but the pace got so fast around the one-third mark that such a tone became impossible to hold.

Overall, this was an okay read, but nothing to write home about. show less

The Martian Queen has been mothballed for a long time and a few people see this a gold mine waiting to be plundered. But all is not right with the ship that Saga has been hired to raid. Her boss knows secrets about the ship because she has been there before with another crew and has an agenda that she hasn’t shared with Saga or her husband. This is a tight story that goes from space piracy to something else in the end. A good story and possibly a nice setup to a future story but isn’t needed for closure to this one.


Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

A good short story that takes place on an abandoned space station. It has elements of horror story, love story as well as being a good science fiction story.