Guest Review by Kevin Hearne

Writing a good science fiction novel these days is tricky. I have found that some authors get the science right at the expense of getting the characters right and I can’t finish, or else the opposite happens—the characters are spiffy but the science is so silly and simplistic that I can’t suspend my disbelief.

So it’s the rare science fiction book that will grab me like The Darwin Elevator did. Jason Hough is definitely the new guy to try—there’s really not much of a risk here. I loved this book and I think you will too.

With a worldwide plague and a mysterious alien space elevator to worry about, you’d think humanity would lay off each other for a while, but there is plenty of scheming and backstabbing going on between a desperate population in Darwin, Australia, and a privileged class living in orbit. The story follows Skyler Luiken and his crew on the ground (all of whom are immune to the plague), but it also follows the scientist Dr. Tania Sharma, who’s in orbit trying to figure out the true purpose of the alien elevator. Though both Skyler and Tania deal with their own insecurities as leaders and don’t particularly wish to be heroes, they fight and stumble their way through multiple crises because the cost of failure would be catastrophic.

The tension and the action keep escalating and combine to make The Darwin Elevator the best sci-fi I’ve read in many years.