Judy Lesley's Reviews > Zero World

Just as a bit of information you might want to know, the description of this book shows 592 pages. Well, that's not quite correct. Zero World is 445 pages long and the novella The Dire Earth takes up the remaining pages. If you read Jason Hough's previous series beginning with The Darwin Elevator (Dire Earth Cycle), The Dire Earth is set years before the events in Elevator. I read The Darwin Elevator when it was released and quite liked it so I was interested to see how the author would handle this novel heading into a new series.

The premise for this novel was intriguing for me; an assassin who had been modified with an implanted device which assisted him in his missions, both physically and psychologically. But then it just plunged straight into a space opera with so many chase scenes and fight scenes and descriptions of body parts and fluids ending up in unfortunate places that it completely missed what I had been hoping for.

If you are looking for a shoot `em up, kill `um all, brain matter splatter kind of novel, you've found it here. Not very much effort was made at world building because this is only the first book in the series. With the exception of one well hidden surprise the book is predictable, escapist entertainment and there is nothing wrong with that if it's what you want. I would definitely classify this novel as fantasy since there wasn't much science fiction described at all. This seems to have taken place about one hundred years into the future and there is the ability to travel in space for specific purposes, but not much more seems to have happened in the realm of technology advancements. As I said, it didn't go in the direction I thought would be interesting but I'm sure other readers will enjoy it more than I did.

I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley.