The Space Between the Stars follows Jamie Allenby on a quest through space with impossible odds.
The novel from Anne Corlett explores religion and romance as Jamie deals with the overpowering isolation in a heavily colonised galaxy which has been decimated by a deadly virus.
And that’s right were we join the self-reliant Jamie, a vet and one of the estimated 0.001% who have survived, on some remote planet as far from people as she can manage. Jamie’s miscarriage is a weight that influences her life far more than she realises. No matter how fierce they are, no human wants to be the last. She sets out to find if there are any other survivors, especially her former fiancé.
As in any apocalyptic narrative, there are those who seek to control and exploit as well as those who seek to rebuild the world… sorry, universe… in a better way.
From the publisher:
How far would you travel to find your way home?
Jamie Allenby wakes, alone, and realises her fever has broken. But could everyone she knows be dead? Months earlier, Jamie had left her partner Daniel, mourning the miscarriage of their baby. She’d just had to get away, so took a job on a distant planet. Then the virus hit.
Jamie survived as it swept through our far-flung colonies. Now she feels desperate and isolated, until she receives a garbled message from Earth. If someone from her past is still alive – perhaps Daniel – she knows she must find a way to return.
She meets others seeking Earth, and their ill-matched group will travel across space to achieve their dream. But they’ll clash with survivors intent on repeating humanity’s past mistakes, threatening their precious fresh start. Jamie will also get a second chance at happiness. But can she escape her troubled past, to embrace a hopeful future?
I have to admit to falling in love with the blurb. The book is beautifully written, understandably so given Anne’s achievement with her short stories. The characters both mesh and conflict well. Jamie encounters a former preacher, a prostitute, and of course, no space journey would be complete without a rugged pilot and his rather questionable crew. Corlett picturesquely captures the isolation, fear and confusion the situation causes.
While I cannot fault the way the characters quickly worm their way into your life, for those who like their Science Fiction to have hard edges The Space Between the Stars will disappoint. It doesn’t contain operatic battles of galactic import, either. Instead the story focuses on relationships between the characters and the human condition which plagues us all. It is a tale of warning and morals delivered from Jamie’s perspective.
From within the genre looking out, there’s a great deal of stereotyping and tropes, but those are used to keep the reader safe. I’m the first to champion a strong female presence and on the surface Jamie certainly represents that, but I failed to warm to her character even as she developed.
I can’t fault the page-turn-ability or Anne Corlett’s ability to write. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the book, but I feel this novel is for readers not familiar with Science Fiction, or for those who shy away from spaceships and aliens. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending it on World Book Night, or to those friends who ‘don’t do sci-fi’ but not so much to my mate who’s just put down Stephen Baxter’s latest.
ISBN: 9781509833528
Hardback: 512 pages.
Publication date: 1 June 2017
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
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by Shellie Horst – SFFWorld.com © 2017
