Adrift

Adrift is a book I wanted to like more than I did. The premise had me interested- a group of tourists on a ship witness an attack on a space station, and have to survive- but this book started out slow and took forever to get going. I think I was halfway through it before the action really picked up, and if I wasn't so taken with the concept I may have considered DNF'ing it. As it is I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did- it has a lot to offer in the second half, but this was strictly an average read for me, at best.

The primary protagonist is Hannah, who comes across as a fairly typical YA heroine. She has traveled to Sigma Station to take a job as a tour guide- tourists flock here for the amazing views of the Horsehead Nebula. She's on her first assignment- she's literally just arrived- when everything goes wrong. Her tour ship, which is little more than a piece of junk, is outside the station when it's attacked, in devastating fashion. Cut off from any help, Hannah and the crew must find a way to survive. There's not much of a crew either- it's basically Hannah and the pilot, a hard-drinking Russian ex- Navy pilot down on her luck. Everyone else aboard are tourists.

The tourists themselves are a mixed bag- there's a family with kids, a diplomat, a troublemaker, some others- and we get some of their perspectives as well. Corey in particular is a standout. He's the son of the diplomat and something of a child prodigy when it comes to ships- not flying them, but he knows their specs, their markings, inside and out. We also get the POV of Jack, the aforementioned troublemaker, who is lamenting the loss of his lover and is basically drowning his sorrows. These different POV's work okay, but I wasn't enamored of the switching around- I found myself most invested in Hannah's story, and just when I was getting into it I would then get a dose of Corey or Jack (and a few others appear as well).

Some of the characters are pretty unlikable, and the situation itself gets pretty harsh. I think the author did a great job painting a bleak picture of their chances- I mean their odds of rescue are pretty slim- and seeing how different personalities reacted to bad news and unpleasant developments was interesting. Again, however, the first half of the book has a lot of this, and after a while I wanted something to happen. This is not an action packed story, and while that's fine it was also a little too sedate for me.

It gets faster paced in the back half, and there's a bit of tension as things happen and the stakes get high. It just takes too long to get there. There's a lot of science fiction around these days and a lot of choices, and if the premise appeals to you I would say go for it, but if you're on the fence on this one I'd say give it a pass, or at least realize that it's a bit slow. It's not a bad book by any means, but it didn't wow me either.