INFERNUM

Adams offers a futuristic debut novel in which people battle robots for a substance that could be used for cataclysmic purposes.

In 2330, the human race is at odds with “aughts”—robots who’ve won their independence from human control. An aught ship is undertaking a trip to the center of the galaxy, where powerful and deadly material called Planck Matter is plentiful. That ship, in turn, is being chased by the human-led Avenger,and the very future of humankind is at stake. This setup is the catalyst for a sweeping adventure that sends the humans toward a space-deforming black hole. Adams’ dialogue and descriptions are remarkably thorough. However, they ultimately provide readers with too much unimportant detail. Capt. Thomas Holbrook of the Avenger, for instance, is described as stroking his chin no less than 20 times. Overall, the novel’s main characters—Holbrook, his right-hand man Cmdr. Paul Stephens, and Rebekah Riesen, a world-renowned scientist aboard the Avenger—feel underdeveloped. Through flashbacks, readers do get a taste of Holbrook’s troubled childhood, but it’s not enough for readers to truly understand his motives. A stronger edit might have allowed for a greater focus on the space-battle action scenes: “Holbrook tapped furiously at the viewscreen, rolling the craft to port. The first blast grazed its underside, scraping an ugly dark gash along its smooth white exterior. Blue-green sparks sputtered from the shuttle’s aft.” As it is, however, characters spend pages in conversation that could have been summed up in a paragraph or two; one nine-page segment focuses solely on an aptitude test, and at another point, it takes two pages for Holbrook and Stephens to figure out they’ve been duped into a meeting to takes them away from their priorities.

A wide-ranging but overly dense SF thriller.