Nightflyers

My first taste of GRRM not in his Song of Ice and Fire series. I was intrigued going into this as his ASOIAF is a fantastic series, well deserving of its plaudits. With that in mind there were big things expected here from me.

Nightflyers plays along many of the classic themes of sci-fi horror/mystery, with the claustrophobic sense of dread of being on a spaceship isolated from the rest of humanity. The eventual identity of the threat in this story is reasonably well foreboded without it being spelled out - so far so good. The book does fall into quite a few sci-fi tropes however, especially with its stilted, Asimovian style dialogue in places.

There was some interesting potential in one of the main things foreboded in the book with the mysterious species moving through the dark spaces between stars without actually visiting them. In the end this intriguing plot device is almost an after thought. It is a shame it was not developed further.

This is a good sci-fi. It doesnt reach the great heights that GRRM has reached in some of his other works, but the story is told well and the concepts are interesting. Solid if not spectacular.

The illustrated version is also rather pretty!