==[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==
Wow! My brain hurts. The author says it took him ten years to write this book and that’s still amazing. I don’t know how anyone could do the research for a book like this without it taking far longer than that. There are so many scientific concepts that are put to the test that it’s, well, mind-boggling! As for the book, let’s just say you’re going on a trip, a very, very, very long trip!
As we start, starship *Erebus* is flying towards an enormous black hole named V4641 Sagi or Sagi’s Black Hole! They’re not doing this on purpose exactly. In fact, they are desperately trying to fix the Erebus so it doesn’t fly into the black hole. Something was wrong with their Alcubierre drive and they were desperately trying to fix it, of course! Commander Beverly Tasker was gently reminding those working on the drive that without it fully functioning, they were, well, doomed!
The other members of the Erebus crew are Major Ava Phillips, a tough as nails soldier or Marine, Xander Frain, a former enemy and somewhat of an android, and Dexter Frampton, the young geek smarter than anyone else in this small world right now. The *Erebus* was attempting to dock with a lander of the *Gagarin* another ship lost to time. Still, the lander had the parts needed to fix the Alcubierre drive and that made it vitally important that they successfully dock with it. If they missed, they were just on the edge of the black hole’s event horizon. Let’s just say they have to fix the A-drive or their story ends here.
Now there is one other person aboard the *Erebus* and that’s Layton Trent, a London detective! If you’ll take the time to remember back to book 2, you’ll know that Trent is after a criminal and when he’s after someone, he doesn’t stop just because they went Into space. Not even if they fell through an FTL gateway, which they did! Trent is about as out of place as you can get. He really doesn’t have a purpose on this ship, but he does seem to ask a lot of questions. I guess if he didn’t then most of the smarter than average crew would only think their actions through and never tell anyone what they were doing until it was done! Not a great way to run a ship.
I’m not going to rehash how everyone including the Erebus got to this point. Let’s just say they do fix the A-drive and head out of the vicinity of the Sagi black hole. Then the question of where to go comes up and of course everyone as they want to go home. But, due to time dilation, which you’ll be hearing a lot about, their home won’t be the same place they left. No, this trip has taken some twenty thousand years already and it’s not any where near completed. Oh, you have no idea how far and how long this story is going to take you.
That’s where the heavy, heavy hand of science comes into play. As you near the speed of light, which seems really absurd, time acts differently on those doing the traveling than those who were left behind, a lot differently. Even just approaching a small percentage of the speed of light is going to cause a time dilation. There’s that word again. I’m not going to get into all the scientific stuff since this book does that on its own.
Then there’s the problem with the Watchers. It turns out that something has been in our solar system watching humanity since the beginning of time. It actually built the FTL gateways, as I understand it, so humanity could leap great distances but now that has all stopped. The Watchers are now doing something else and it’s not in humanities favor. The Erebus will make it close to home, well, actually they will see Earth, but it’s not their home any more. You’ll see, you’ll read about how time dilation can and does destroy everything and why long space travel in ships not coming near the speed of light will cause humans untold problems. It’s like once you leave, you’re not coming back here, because here won’t ever exist again.
But then what if you keep going and going. Where do you wind up if you run out of time? Well, this book is going to tell you that. Put on your thinking caps because Mr. Kern is going to stretch your brain quite a bit. I now understand why it took him ten years to finish this book. I’ll be thinking about it probably for the next ten.
A very good read, very exciting and while there is a lot of scientific stuff thrown around, there are a lot of just down-right exciting scenes that are writing very well.