The Darwin Elevator (The Dire Earth Cycle #1) by Jason M. Hough

Science Fiction

What Goodreads Says:

"Jason M. Hough’s pulse-pounding debut combines the drama, swagger, and vivid characters of Joss Whedon’s Firefly with the talent of sci-fi author John Scalzi.

In the mid-23rd century, Darwin, Australia, stands as the last human city on Earth. The world has succumbed to an alien plague, with most of the population transformed into mindless, savage creatures. The planet’s refugees flock to Darwin, where a space elevator—created by the architects of this apocalypse, the Builders—emits a plague-suppressing aura.

Skyler Luiken has a rare immunity to the plague. Backed by an international crew of fellow “immunes,” he leads missions into the dangerous wasteland beyond the aura’s edge to find the resources Darwin needs to stave off collapse. But when the Elevator starts to malfunction, Skyler is tapped—along with the brilliant scientist, Dr. Tania Sharma—to solve the mystery of the failing alien technology and save the ragged remnants of humanity."

My Goodreads rating on The Darwin Elevator would be 5 stars for the first half and 3 stars for the second.  Since I can’t do that the book will get 4 stars.

The Darwin Elevator captured and held my attention for the first half of the book.  The plot was very exciting and the characters were well developed.  There was great world building, danger and tension.  So what happened after the first half to change my rating?  To me it looked like the author had those well developed characters acting out of character to keep the plot moving in the direction he wanted.  I found that their action were a distraction that took my attention away from the plot.   On a personal level some of the characters I really liked were killed off.  And then the book ended!  It did not finish, it ended!

Did all of that make this a bad book?  No!  Even though in the second half I found the character’s actions distracting I still finished in record time.  This is book one in a three book series so a cliffhanger ending is not unusual.  It does make me want to read book two as soon as possible. 

Even though I found some things that I thought took away from the story I still recommend the book. This is a great new series for Science Fiction fans.  

Del Rey will release The DarwinElevator by Jason M. Hough on July 30, 2013.  There is still time to pre-order.

I received an eARC of The Darwin Elevator from Netgalley.