Screams From The Void by Anne Tibbets

 

Screams From The Void by Anne Tibbets.

Published 18th May 2021 by Flame Tree Press.

From the cover of the book:

For two years in deep space, the freighter Demeter and a small crew have collected botanical life from other planets. It's a lesson in patience and hell.

Mechanics Ensign Reina is ready to jump ship, if only because her abusive ex is also aboard, as well as her overbearing boss.

 It's only after a foreign biological creature sneaks aboard and wreaks havoc on the ship and crew that Reina must find her grit - and maybe create a gadget or two - to survive...that is, if the crew members don't lose their sanity and turn on each other in the process.

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I am rather partial to a space adventure, especially one with some strong female characters, and Screams From The Void proved to be just the thing to satisfy my galactic leanings!

The Demeter is on a two year mission to collect specimens of alien plant life from planets in deep space, before returning to Earth with their potentially valuable load. The small crew is made up of a few experienced officers, including the brooding Science Officer Pollux who is sick to death of her colleagues, and a handful of ensigns on their first United Space Corps mission - one of whom, Mechanics Ensign Raina, is finding the last few months of the trip pretty hard to bear too. Her boss has turned out to be a lazy, boorish, regulation obsessed chauvinist, who belittles her at every turn and is quick to quash any ideas she may have of showing her technical flare, even though her skills are just about the only thing holding the 'bucket of bolts' Demeter together, and she is trying to extricate herself from a disastrous affair with another of the crew, Morven, who has turned out to be a far from ideal partner. 

When a biological creature sneaks aboard the ship after one of their planetary sample collecting trips, it spells disaster for the crew. With officers dropping like flies, it is up to the ensigns to try to pull together to save the ship - a task that proves far from easy considering the aggression and robustness of the creature; the total inability of some of them to cope with danger; Morven's simmering hatred for anyone who dares to gainsay his ambition to be in charge - and his vicious resentment of Raina, who no longer wants anything to do with his controlling and downright abusive behaviour.

As the situation escalates and the blood and guts fly, it is two women on board that are the ones to grasp the off-worldly nettle and show their strength and intelligence to deal with the rampaging creature - Raina, with her quick mind, reflexes and technical prowess, and Pollux, who channels her battle with the demons from her past into the kind of force they desperately need to survive.

This is a fast and furious space drama, with chilling echoes of Alien, that is hugely entertaining, and rather intriguingly runs the history of Raina and Morven's toxic relationship in a back to front timeline alongside the current events playing out on the ship. But it also has some very interesting things to say about sibling rivalry; the struggle of women to earn recognition and promotion in the workplace (albeit a workplace in space), and about the insidious way abusive relationships can take over your life - especially when you cannot escape the clutches of your abuser. Rather deliciously, our two women manage to kick back against all that is thrown at them in this book, and come out firmly on top, which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

It was interesting to note that Anne Tibbets says in her Acknowledgements that she had little success getting this book published until after the advent of the #MeToo movement, which I think says a lot about the distorted perception about who actually reads books in the sci-fi genre - contrary to popular belief, women do read sci-fi and they want to read about the kind of strong female leads in this book, who refuse to fit into sexual stereotypes. I loved it! More please sci-fi publishers!

Screams From The Void is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Flame Tree Press for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Former TV writer Anne Tibbets is author of The Line Book One and Two: Carrier and Walled, and co-authored the first book of the sci-fi series Extinction Biome: Invasion, and authored the second, Extinction Biome: Dispersal, both as Addison Gunn. When Anne isn’t writing she’s a Literary Agent.