Review - Red Noise by John P. Murphy

 

 

 

 Title: Red Noise

Author: John P. Murphy

Pages: 440

Publisher: Angry Robot

Release Date: 9th June 2020

 

Blurb from Goodreads: 

Caught up in a space station turf war between gangs and corrupt law, a lone asteroid miner decides to take them all down.

When an asteroid miner comes to Station 35 looking to sell her cargo and get back to the solitude she craves, she gets swept up in a three-way standoff with gangs and crooked cops. Faced with either taking sides or cleaning out the Augean Stables, she breaks out the flamethrower.

 

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My Review:

*I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot*

The Miner isn't looking for trouble when she arrives at Station 35 wanting to sell ore, but that's what she finds.

Station 35 is occupied by two rival gangs fighting over control of the space station, while the corrupt law enforcement takes money from both sides.

The Miner decides to take things into her own hands, but might soon wish that she hadn't.

The concept of the book really intrigued me and I went into it ready for some gripping action. However, I ended up disappointed.

The Miner was an intriguing protagonist. Her backstory was interesting, but I didn't feel that I really connected with her or that she was fleshed out enough. I liked the relationships she formed with some of the other characters as well as seeing how the Miner dealt/coped with different situations.

The plot took a while to get going and the pacing was too slow for me, but I understand that the author needed to set things up before getting to the action, which there wasn't as much of as I was expecting. There were a couple of things that happened that I didn't see coming, but overall I found the plot a bit lacklustre, despite a few engaging action scenes.

The writing style was one where I had to take my time reading every sentence, as opposed to one where I could fly through the pages. Because of this and the slow pacing, it did feel like it took me a very long time to finish the book.

I did enjoy the book to begin with, but after a while, when things didn't pick up, I found myself enjoying it less and less as it went on. However, I kept on reading in the hope that I would get back into what was happening, which I didn't.

I'm disappointed that I didn't enjoy this more, and, unfortunately, this is a case where the execution of the book fell short for me, despite the promising premise.

Overall, this was an okay but disappointing read.