The Luminous Dead

TL;DR

I think I was going into the book thinking it would be something else. This is a girl who has a very advanced suit that can do a lot of things climbing inside a cave talking to another person who gives her information and suggestions. Doesn't really feel like a science fiction book but it wasn't a bad read. If you like climbing then you will appreciate it more.

If what you want is the atmosphere of being trapped in darkness like the cave part of this book but with way more science fiction I would highly recommend The Last Astronaut. I thought this book would be similar but it wasn't.

My Scoring System

I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:

X - Main Story: I like the idea but not much the execution, as I said I thought this was going to be a different book. Not a bad story just didn't have much to do with science fiction to be honest.

X - Side Stories (if it applies): Eeh, the side stuff with both our characters is pretty uninteresting, thankfully it's not the major part of the book.

✓ - Characters: There are only two and thankfully I liked both of them, their banter was the best part of the book.

✓ - Setting/Ambiance: The idea of being trapped inside a cave is a nice idea, also not knowing if there is someone or something else down there is scary.

✓ - Ending: Regular ending, nothing too surprising happened but it wasn't terrible.

Extensive Review

The strong point and my favorite part was the interaction between our main protagonist (Gyre) and her handler (Emogene) I really liked that and thankfully it's the majority of the book. I enjoyed reading every time they talked.

The worst part for me is the climbing. I never did this sport but to me it was very boring just reading pages and pages on how she put her leg here, the arm there. Put a bolt in the rock here a rope there... I really disliked that. Even just traversing down from a slope, since this is a science fiction book I was expecting her suit to have some nano technology that let's her just adhere to the stone, or some advance suspensions on her legs to witstand high falls, or maybe some kind of device that leaves a pad that you can safely fall on. No, instead we get to read about how she went into her backpack and took out the rope and some bolts to hold it. Used the drill to place the bolt, run the rope inside, check the stability to see if it's secure, use the rope to slowly descend onto the rock. Leave it there and move on to the next obstacle. I'm sorry but in my opinion this is very boring.

The story and the idea of being trapped in the darkness of a cave was okay. Too bad that her suit has the ability to kind of simulate very clearly how the cave looks without needing light or anything so she's not in the darkness unless she turns that off, both our protagonist and her handler have different reasons for going into the cave and don't trust eachother. The ending was serviceable, nothing unexpected happened or some crazy twist, but it wasn't terrible.