Drones Above Hell Below by Eric KayMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a 3-star review. I was invited to beta-read this book. While that is a fair estimate of my experience, this could easily be a 4+ star book with a bit of editing/clean-up.
The book is the story of our hero Killian who is part of a prospecting/exploring team on an alien planet. Most of the team either dies or is captured (it's unclear). Killian rescues one of his teammates and escapes back to their homebase planet via a jump drive.
Ordinarily, the jump drive creates a near instantaneous transition. But something went wrong and the jump drops them ~50 years in the future. The future is controlled by an AI that uses a social credit system to control/shape human behavior.
The humans have been back mining the planet for most of 50 years.
If you think this sounds a little like the set up for the movie "Aliens", you are right. It's still a solid premise.
The AI doesn't know what to do with Killian. It starts him off with a child's social credit score and makes him an offer if he will go back with a team to the planet. The AI has lost contact with the settlement and it has decided to send a military team to investigate.
This book has all of the prerequisites for an entertaining story. Exploration of a new world. Military action. Even a bit of a Star Trek/Kirk "putting it to" an alien logic system. IYKYK
But...the beta version has many little errors. Spelling. Changes in gender for no reason. Continuity errors (our hero was released from his handcuffs, but then was back in them).
And my pet peeve was the overuse of modern idioms. I don't believe most new/modern idioms will survive centuries from now. IMO, using modern idioms only works if the book is either humorous or just being a bit tongue-in-cheek. Modern idioms generally don't work well in serious sci-fi. Generally, less is more. One or two are excusable.
Hopefully, the author will clean up some of the more obvious issues before the formal release date. The book was generally very entertaining and engaging. I was stealing time from other priorities because I wanted to know what came next.
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