Offworld

When I was a girl, one of my dreams was to become an astronaut. I don’t know if it was a desire born from all those early mornings my dad would get us up to watch the rocket launches or all those field trips to the space museum, or maybe it was watching all those Star Trek episodes that inspired me; regardless, space exploration fascinated me.

So, because of my latent love for all things space and James T Kirk, I was fascinated by the premise of Robin Parrish’s novel Offworld:

“Every Person on This Planet Has Disappeared.”

Commander Christopher Burke and his crew are humanity’s greatest explorers. They’ve finished their mission on the red dirt of Mars and now they just want to get back to Earth. To see friends, family, and loved ones. To be home.

But even with communication to ground control cut and a perilous landing, nothing could prepare the crew for what they discover when they step foot back on planet Earth.

Everyone … everywhere … is gone.

It’s not a dream. It’s not a trick.

Now Burke and his team have one mission: find out who or what is behind the disappearance of all mankind.

Pretty interesting stuff. I have to tell you, the book suffers somewhat from the occasional cliché and sometime stilted prose. However, all such drawbacks are countered by the overarching mystery framing the whole novel: what happened to everybody? Now, I’m not going to tell you the resolution made sense; it is science fiction after all. But I will say that Offworld keeps the level of mystery obscure enough and compelling enough to keep the reader engaged until the end. Throw in some action scenes and some heroic astronauts and you have a pretty entertaining read.

Intrigued? Publisher Bethany House has provided an excerpt here.

Wife and mother, Bible teacher and blogger, Lisa loves Jesus, coffee, dark chocolate and, of course, books. Read more of her reflections at Lisa writes….