Vessel

I'm a fan of the Watchfinder YouTube channel so when I found out its very likable host also wrote books, I thought I'd give one a crack.

Well, ten out of ten for effort, but its self-published nature showed through, with a typo or two and an inconsistent tone of voice - these are American characters who drive trucks and ‘do the math' but then they cross the Atlantic and ‘hoover up', drive lorries and spell ‘defense' with a very English ‘c'. It's picky, but it did muddle me up a bit.

Aiming for a Solaris or 2001 style vibe, the story itself was bit ponderous. All the space jargon I could live with - it actually added a fair bit of authenticity, but it was oddly paced and the characters were certainly anonymous. Some actions taken by the cast made no sense and were a waste of everyone's time. Towards the end I saw I had 10% of the book to go and I wondered how it was going resolve itself so quickly. Well, it didn't really.

The ideas were there but never really got a chance to shine. An editor could have whipped this into a nice, entertaining shape.