Obscura by Joe Hart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Deep space is terrifying. Shallow space is terrifying, too. Outer space in general scares the hell out of me and I'd actually just prefer to think as little about what is going on outside of the Earth's atmosphere as possible. I am fine here on Earth, thanks.

Obscura is an engaging novel. It's atmospheric, eerie and unsettling. Sure there are aspects that are far from perfect (the ending - prior to the epilogue - was absolutely ridiculous due to the obvious solution presented that would have solved ALL of the dilemmas that arose earlier in the book..but ya know, who am I to use logic?), but the good outweighed the bad here. Maybe it's because I don't typically read sci-fi thrillers (if the word "thriller" is still in the genre, does it even count as expanding upon my embarrassingly narrowminded taste in literature?), so I find myself able to forgive the shortcomings of this novel with more ease than usual.

I actually did not predict the "big reveal", if you can call if that, but again, I accredit that to my novice level navigational skills within a science-y (read: somewhat intelligent) narrative. My specialties are limited to deceitful marriages, alcohol and/or trauma induced amnesia and manipulative relationships, okay? But never fear, once I get a few more sci-fi novels under my belt, I will be ripping those a new (black) hole in no time, too.

That said, what I cannot forgive is the overuse of the word "Hydro" when referring to the main character's drug of choice. My god, you're telling me the human race has been able to successfully develop a teleportation machine and set up shop on Mars, but we haven't been able to come up with more creative street names for hydrocodone by 2028? Might be one of the least believable aspects of this whole narrative to tell you the truth...

But seriously, outer space is horrifying, solitude in outer space is even more so, and the possibility that NASA and probably all government officials are lying to us in order to prevent the average Joe from finding out the truth about the universe around us is not only horrifying, but also a reality. Yay - happy thoughts!



View all my reviews