The Burning Dark

[sawyl]

Having enjoyed Adam Christopher's novella Cold War and feeling in need of some space opera set in the same universe, I dove into The Burning Dark feet first. It may not have been quite what I was expecting but that's not a criticism — my expectations were clearly flawed, despite hearing Christopher talk about the book on Tea and Jeopardy — because I actually liked it so much I read the whole thing in a single sitting.

The book opens with Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland, on the verge of retirement, being shipped out to the Shadow System to oversee the decommission of the space station Coast City. The job is a complete waste of time and the locals are unfriendly, not least because the local marine contingent can't find any information in the databases on the battle where Ida claims he won his Fleet Medal by taking down a Mother Spider. With little to occupy his time, Ida builds himself an old-style space radio and uses it to listen to voices on the forbidden subspace bands; voices that include a Russian cosmonaut who died thousands of years ago.

Meanwhile the rest of the station's remaining personel aren't doing much better. Psi-Sergeant Carmina Serra has started hearing what she things might by her grandmother's voice; her boyfriend, former special ops man Charlie Carter, is being haunted by nightmares of a particularly unpleasant covert mission; while the temporary commander, Roberto King, has been completely obsessed with a book left for him by his vanished predecessor. And as if all this wasn't enough, the station finally seems to be succumbing to the damaging purple light from the star it was built to study: with the demolition proceeding rapidly the environmental systems have started to fail causing random blackouts, sudden drops in temperature, and the complete loss of FTL communications with the rest of the universe.

Despite its space opera trappings — a universe where humanity is at war with giant, mechanical, planet eating spiders! — The Burning Dark is, at heart, a very clever ghost story — think Solaris meets The Haunting of Hill House. The supernatural elements are well integrated with the rest of the world building — the Fleet uses a mechanised form of psychic energy to allow its technology to communicate — and the plot elegantly combines time-honoured conspiracy theories about the space race with elements from Japanese mythology.

The characters are a generally satisfying bunch, gradually descending into psychosis as the oppressive nature of the station weighs them down, with the stronge, battled-hardened marines being some of the first to succumb. Ida Cleveland is particularly successful, treading a fine line been war hero and blowhard, making it equally possible to believe that he really is the tactical genius he claims to be or that he's an unhinged blowhard taking credit for something he hasn't done as the marines seem to believe.

Highly recommended.