Obscura

When looking at galleys to request for reading and reviewing, I always look for stories that are intriguing, often involving subject matters I find interesting or in genres I enjoy. You never know for certain whether your hopes for a good novel will come to fruition, so each galley is a bit like a leap of faith in which you put your trust in the author to tell a well-written and entertaining story. The leap becomes just that much larger when there is no buzz surrounding a novel or one that is not getting a lot of attention from other reviewers. This is how I felt about Obscura, a novel which I should enjoy given its suspenseful premise and the fact that it takes place in space – two of my story-selecting forms of kryptonite. I do not show more anyone else who has read it, so there is no buzz, no word-of-mouth to shed some light on the story or at least provide some form of reaction about it. So, opening to that first page was a leap in a way. It is one of the few times I have gone into a novel really not knowing anything more than what the synopsis told me.

Now that I finished the story, I can say that the leap was totally worth it. The story is intense; think horror movie intense. Gillian is alone on a ship in space for most of the novel, except strange things keep occurring that should not be happening if she were truly alone. Not only do you have the fear of the unknown, you have the fear of technology and the fear of absolute loneliness playing with each other. Add to that mental impairment that comes with drug withdrawals and abject grief, and you have a recipe for one of the scarier novels you will read.

Gillian makes for an excellent heroine. She is highly intelligent and fiercely independent yet extremely vulnerable given the losses in her life. She is battling a painkiller addiction, which makes her an unreliable narrator. However, when the truth reveals itself, she becomes the ultimate hero, doing what needs to be done for the best resolution possible, even if it involves the ultimate sacrifice. Her flaws make her real; her determination makes her admirable. She is a character with whom it is easy to sympathize and for whom it is easy to cheer.

The story itself is heart-pounding almost from the opening chapter. You are immediately thrust into the action so that Gillian’s nervousness becomes your nervousness because you don’t know anything else. Gillian’s unreliability only becomes apparent as you understand the forces that put her into space. What happens while she is on the shuttle is downright terrifying as you know nothing and can only see the action through her very faulty eyes. The action on the shuttle is only half the story though. What follows after is crazy science fiction goodness, equally as intense as only a good sci-fi action story can be.

Obscura is the best type of gamble because I so thoroughly enjoyed the story, more than I ever imagined I would. I fell hard for Gillian and her plight, and everything that happened to her or around her while she was on the shuttle and after only served to increase my interest in her success. The writing is taut, providing balance between science and fiction, telling and showing. This is an action-adventure story, so one would not normally expect character development; however Gillian does grow as an individual throughout the mission, coming to realizations about her past and present behaviors that indicate greater self-awareness and an eagerness to get things right. I only wish I could bring greater attention to this fun and scary novel because it most definitely deserves to become a popular summer read. show less

Obscura is a story about a scientist, Dr. Gillian Ryan, who is pregnant with her first child. Her husband has started to forget things, stare vacantly at nothing and have violent outbursts. Before she is able to let him know she is pregnant he blanks out as they are driving and gets them into a horrific car accident. She survives and he is badly injured but his disease is rapidly deteriorating all the memories of her and their marriage. He eventually dies from the disease shortly after their daughter is born.
This incident drives Dr. Gillian Ryan to get her doctorate and began researching the disease for a possible cure when her daughter starts to show signs of the same disease. When her funding is cut off by the government she gets an show more unexpected offer from an old college flame who works for NASA. He wants her to travel to the International Space Station to study crew members who are starting to show signs of this mysterious disease in exchange for unlimited funding for her research. Even though it means leaving her daughter for 6 months the chance to cure her is to great and she agrees. Once she gets into outer space though nothing is quite what it seems.
I enjoyed that this book wasn't so technical that I lost interest and the ending was definitely unexpected. I'm hoping that this story continues but it is excellent as a stand alone novel!
If you liked The Martian by Andy Weir or The Deep by Nick Cutter, will enjoy this novel.
Riveting, fast paced, kept me on the edge of my seat. Loved it! show less

I wanted to read this because I'm a sucker for space station stories and I wasn't disappointed. The pace was well done and the multiple mysteries are laid out very well. As if missions to Mars aren't fraught enough, we have Dr. Gillian Ryan a lead neural researcher along for the trip. She specializes in Losian's disease, a neuro-degenerative disease that causes rapid memory loss, rage outbursts and ultimately, death. It's claimed her husband, Kent and ails her daughter, Carrie. Her grief hampers her but it's her opioid addiction that's really what should have excluded her from this trip. The fate of the mission is given by interspersed snippets of interviews given in its aftermath, so a bit of the tension is bled away knowing Discovery show more VI didn't go as planned, it doesn't dim the drive to know exactly what went down.

Carson, a former boyfriend from college, arrives to offer her a once in a lifetime chance. his offer coincides with the day she finds out her research is losing its funding. If she goes on a mission to the UN space station to do research she'll have just about unlimited funding for her research (this is the same sort of offer extended to Drs Grant & Sattler in Jurassic Park... and we all know how well that turned out). The research she's expected to undertake is on those who've been subjected to teleportation (the mechanism is really neat where the body is taken down to absolute zero making the atoms traceable and calculated at a fixed point so thereby able to be disassembled and moved from one place and reassembled in another) are changed by it and experience memory loss and other symptoms that are much like Losian's.

Gillian agrees to go along and along with her research assistant Birk, she's stashed a six month supply of her hydrocodone (Carson cleared it because every gram on payload needs to be accounted for) and she's up and away. It's not long before the lies told to get Gillian on the mission start showing themselves. For instance, she's not going to the UN station orbiting Earth. The real mission is to the space station orbiting Mars. A bit farther away, that. Carson and Tinsel were in on the lie but Mission Commander Easton was not. Additionally, they won't fill her in on all the details of the mission. Understandably, Gillian is not happy. Still, they aren't going to turn the ship around and return her to Earth either. She's in this for the long haul. Poor Birk's body has decided that it doesn't like space at all so while he's still stout of heart, his stomach isn't letting him do much more than remain close to the nearest commode. Stasis comes as a welcome sleep for him but Gillian refuses to be put under. She opts for being awake for the 106 day trip to Mars.

Before they even get to Mars' orbit, a crew member suffers a terrible death and Gillian is the prime suspect. She was the only person not in stasis. She also went through a very bad opioid withdrawal during the time everyone else was asleep. The hallucinations she was also having may or may not have been related to the drugs, the withdrawal or something sinister but elusive. Suspected or likely murderer or not, Gillian's still expected to do the work she was sent to do. And then things really get even more dangerous and frankly, creepy.

The culmination of story was well done. The answer to the teleportation sickness turned out to be obvious but was still revealed in an interesting way. This had me on edge right to the Epilogue (and this was a welcome one after all that had come before). This was just a compulsive read. I quite enjoyed Gillian & Birk characterisations and the way isolation, loss and addiction were expressed here. This is also the second book I've read this year set on space stations that plays with and asks interesting questions about our memories & their value to us. Like Chris Brookmyre's Places in the Darkness, this will stay on my mind for a while. And I know it's likely unseemly to ask this when this book hasn't actually debuted yet but... when's the sequel coming? Because you know.... that ending. Definitely recommended.

I received a free galley of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. show less

I received a free copy of this books for review purposes.
I haven't previously read any of Joe Hart's work, but I had heard his name mentioned in various genre circles. The basic scifi concept of this books sounded appealing to me, though its a little bit softer of sf than I was expecting going in.
First off, Joe does a great job being both realistic and inclusive in his choices of characters. We have a strong female protagonist struggling with mental illness and addiction. We have upper class gay male foreign couples. Representational diversity is definitely a strength here. The story resolves around said protagonist's struggles as a medical research scientist to find a cure for a new disease effecting populations world-wide, including show more her daughter, with symptoms akin to dementia. Her search for solutions leads her places she never would have imagined going, including space and Mars.
For much of the book, I felt like I was in for a ride similar to what one would get reading Crighton or Weir, in terms of the blending of scifi, real science, speculative fiction, and storytelling. Though, as I said, the science gets a little soft as the story goes on. And honestly, the shades of event horizon-ish thriller near the climax were really exciting. But the author's explanation of the flaws in the teleportation technology of being related to the degradation of the 'soul' really lost me. While we had been given to know the protagonist had a religious background in childhood, religion was not something we had been led to believe played much of a role in her life anymore. No other characters show any hints of religious beliefs, and come from a variety of highly scientific backgrounds. The story itself has been setting up the reader to look for scientific solutions to various problems. Then out of nowhere we're tossed this explanation for one of the major challenges the characters face being about some existential/spiritual issue and its very grating. It also feels a little lazy. Its a simple explanation that the author doesn't have put too much thought or word count into explaining because of its very nature, even though it doesn't fit with the themes and overall narrative we've been presented.
Barring that failing, and its relatively close to the end of the novel, its a fun, light read. If Crighton and Weir were too 'heavy' scientifically, but you want something with a similar feel, check this out. show less

In the not so distant future, an aggressive disease known as Losian’s is wreaking havoc on the world. Losian’s is a form of dementia that can strike individuals of any age and at any time. The symptoms are disturbing, often leading to violence in the affected individual, and the cause is unknown. Dr. Gillian Ryan knows all too well the impact the disease can have as she lost her husband to it and now her daughter has become a victim as well. She is on the brink of finding a cure, but funding is running out. A man from her past shows up at her door with an offer she can’t refuse. He wants to work with NASA and travel to their space station for 6 months, where the crew have fallen under the effects of something similar to Losian’s show more and in exchange she will receive funding for the rest of her life.

Gillian initially struggles with leaving her daughter behind, but the idea of endless funding to find a cure to save her is too strong. Once Gillian departs on her space journey she finds out her destination isn’t quite where she expected. Determined to not lose sight of her end goal, she puts herself on a rigorous path of finding a cure. Her quest is severely hindered as she battles an addiction to pain pills and a growing sense of paranoia. As nightmares come to life around her and Gillian’s life appears to be threatened, she must work to find the answers to not only what’s happening around her, but also discover the cure to a disease that no one has been able to get close to finding. In a race against the clock, can Gillian accomplish all that she needs or will she succumb to addiction and paranoia?

OBSCURA is an original and intriguing science fiction thriller beautifully mixing a chilling future reality with the unbreakable human notion to fight for those that mean the most to us. Joe Hart creates a 2028 in which a disease that already affects many of the world’s population today has evolved into something that could strike anyone at anytime. In today’s society it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t been impacted by Alzheimer’s and dementia or knows someone else who was. The relatability of the effects of this disease and the notion that it could be worse, creates a connection to the main character of Gillian that allows the reader to understand her drive to find a cure for Losian’s at almost any cost. The thriller aspect of this book adds another component that keeps the reader flipping pages to find the answer. It’s clear early on in the novel that someone is trying to sabotage the NASA mission Gillian is a part of, but Hart keeps the reader constantly guessing who the mastermind might be. OBSCURA is a 5 star read perfect for thriller fans looking for a space and science fiction aspect to change things up from the typical offerings in this genre.

A special thank you to Amazon Publishing and Joe Hart for sending me a copy of OBSCURA in exchange for my honest review. show less

Wow. Let me say that again, Wow! I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, even as I started reading it. It's a sci-fi psychological thriller with so many twists and turns. You think you have part of it figured out, only to look behind you and see that not everything is as it seems. I had the audio version of this, and was listening to it in the car... this story was so compelling that I was offering to go to the grocery store just to get back in the car. I was happy for stoplights and sad at green lights, because I needed more time in the car.
Well written, well edited... this was a great story.

Dr, Gillian Ryan lost her husband to the disease, and now her daughter is battling it too. A strange disease that takes away a person's memories, leaving them in a confused, fugue state. Losian's is a lot like Alzheimer's, but it can strike anyone, young or old. Ryan is working hard to study the disease and hopes to find a cure. But the powers-that-be don't believe it's a concern and feel her research is taking too long, producing too few results. Ryan is notified that her funding has been cut. Just as she is reeling from the loss of her support funds, NASA approaches her, offering full permanent funding if she commits to a six-month mission to investigate some problems on the international space station. When it's too late to back out, show more she discovers that it's an entirely different, and much more dangerous mission. Someone has a secret. Someone doesn't want this investigation. And some secrets are worth killing for.

I loved this book! The plot and suspense kept my attention the entire time! There are many stories about mysterious diseases and dangerous missions in space, but this book didn't fall into old tropes. The story is creative, thrilling and suspenseful! It would be so difficult to be on a dangerous mission in space and to not know who, if anyone, you can trust. Gillian Ryan is a flawed, but very intelligent and driven main character. Several times I was so mad about how she was being manipulated, but it just made the suspense and creepiness of the plot that much stronger. The story definitely kept me on the edge of my seat. Every time I thought I knew what was going on and what would happen next, the story zinged off in a direction I didn't anticipate. Awesome!! Just brilliant!

I listened to the audiobook version of this story. The audio is just over 10.5 hours long. Christina Traister narrates. She reads at a nice even pace with good inflection. I have hearing loss but was easily able to hear and understand the entire book.

Joe Hart is the author of several suspense/thriller novels including Singularity and Cruel World. I'm definitely going to be reading more by Hart!

**I voluntarily read an advance readers copy of this book from Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** show less