Book Review: Tantalus Depths, by Evan Graham
A sci-fi horror-thriller with a Final Girl in space.
Inkshares, 2017, 421 pages
An AI cannot lie. An AI must obey human commands. An AI cannot kill. These are the laws SCARAB has broken, and only Mary knows.
The Tantalus 13 survey expedition went off the rails as soon as Mary Ketch and the crew of the Diamelen learned that the thing beneath their feet wasn’t a planet. An impossibly vast and ancient artificial structure lies below, hidden from the universe under a façade of cratered stone.
SCARAB arrived on Tantalus 13 two years ago. An artificially intelligent, self-constructing factory, it was supposed to aid the crew in their mission, to meet their every need. But when erratic behavior in the AI coincides with a series of deadly accidents among the crew, Mary faces the horrifying possibility that SCARAB has gone rogue.
With the AI watching her every move, any attempt to warn the crew could be disastrous. But SCARAB knows far more about the Tantalus 13 enigma than it lets on, and the secrets it’s willing to kill for may have dire implications for all humankind.
Tantalus Depths is an indie-published SF thriller about an interstellar mining expedition gone horribly wrong. It's got a lot of obvious influences: the creepily-helpful rogue AI is a direct descendent of 2001's HAL. The creepy alien planet with ancient, long-dead builders and a deadly surprise has an Aliens vibe without the xenomorphs. And the Final Girl is, well, every horror movie ever. There's even some Lovecraftian cosmic horror in the end.
A corporate survey crew is sent to the planet Tantalus 13 to check up on an automated mining colony that was launched thirteen years ago. SCARAB, the friendly AI who greets them, has been busily setting up shop awaiting the first human arrivals.
Each member of the crew has a distinct personality and some distinct baggage. Mary Ketch, our Final Girl protagonist, soon realizes that she's probably not the most fucked up person there, and also that the company that sent them chose an expendable second-rate crew for a reason: something is sus about Tantalus 13.
The mystery is well-plotted while being fairly predictable. The crew discovers that the planet has an artificial construct beneath its surface, and in fact, the entire planet may be an artificial construct. SCARAB is clearly untrustworthy from the beginning, but it takes a while to reveal exactly what's going on. The first half of the book is a little slow, with a lot of infodumps about laser miners, pocket nukes, AIs (governed by Asimovian laws yet still capable of breaking their constraints), and handwavium FTL drives and the like. That's all fine for veteran sci-fi geeks but may not be that interesting for readers who just want to get to the screaming.
The screaming starts eventually, and then it becomes a survival in space story, with a rogue AI vs. a squishy human crew.
All these ingredients made for a pretty good SF thriller, but the execution was less excellent than it could have been. I enjoyed the story, but the writing - at times full of expository technobabble, at other times full of purple dialog - sometimes took me out of the narrative.
The ending was imaginative and unexpected but also required a little too much suspension of disbelief.
Tantalus Depths is a B-movie sort of book, so if you like B-movies (especially with squishy humans getting murdered in space), you will probably enjoy it. I'd probably read more by this author, especially if his writing craft improves.
My complete list of book reviews.
Inkshares, 2017, 421 pages
An AI cannot lie. An AI must obey human commands. An AI cannot kill. These are the laws SCARAB has broken, and only Mary knows.
The Tantalus 13 survey expedition went off the rails as soon as Mary Ketch and the crew of the Diamelen learned that the thing beneath their feet wasn’t a planet. An impossibly vast and ancient artificial structure lies below, hidden from the universe under a façade of cratered stone.
SCARAB arrived on Tantalus 13 two years ago. An artificially intelligent, self-constructing factory, it was supposed to aid the crew in their mission, to meet their every need. But when erratic behavior in the AI coincides with a series of deadly accidents among the crew, Mary faces the horrifying possibility that SCARAB has gone rogue.
With the AI watching her every move, any attempt to warn the crew could be disastrous. But SCARAB knows far more about the Tantalus 13 enigma than it lets on, and the secrets it’s willing to kill for may have dire implications for all humankind.
Tantalus Depths is an indie-published SF thriller about an interstellar mining expedition gone horribly wrong. It's got a lot of obvious influences: the creepily-helpful rogue AI is a direct descendent of 2001's HAL. The creepy alien planet with ancient, long-dead builders and a deadly surprise has an Aliens vibe without the xenomorphs. And the Final Girl is, well, every horror movie ever. There's even some Lovecraftian cosmic horror in the end.
A corporate survey crew is sent to the planet Tantalus 13 to check up on an automated mining colony that was launched thirteen years ago. SCARAB, the friendly AI who greets them, has been busily setting up shop awaiting the first human arrivals.
Each member of the crew has a distinct personality and some distinct baggage. Mary Ketch, our Final Girl protagonist, soon realizes that she's probably not the most fucked up person there, and also that the company that sent them chose an expendable second-rate crew for a reason: something is sus about Tantalus 13.
The mystery is well-plotted while being fairly predictable. The crew discovers that the planet has an artificial construct beneath its surface, and in fact, the entire planet may be an artificial construct. SCARAB is clearly untrustworthy from the beginning, but it takes a while to reveal exactly what's going on. The first half of the book is a little slow, with a lot of infodumps about laser miners, pocket nukes, AIs (governed by Asimovian laws yet still capable of breaking their constraints), and handwavium FTL drives and the like. That's all fine for veteran sci-fi geeks but may not be that interesting for readers who just want to get to the screaming.
The screaming starts eventually, and then it becomes a survival in space story, with a rogue AI vs. a squishy human crew.
All these ingredients made for a pretty good SF thriller, but the execution was less excellent than it could have been. I enjoyed the story, but the writing - at times full of expository technobabble, at other times full of purple dialog - sometimes took me out of the narrative.
The ending was imaginative and unexpected but also required a little too much suspension of disbelief.
Tantalus Depths is a B-movie sort of book, so if you like B-movies (especially with squishy humans getting murdered in space), you will probably enjoy it. I'd probably read more by this author, especially if his writing craft improves.
My complete list of book reviews.