Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson

Good sci-fi mysteries are hard to find and not a lot of authors tackle them. Tade Thompson has added a really interesting entry into this genre with Far From The Light of Heaven. Shell Campion comes from an astronaut family. Freshly graduated from training she is first officer on a transport ship. Her duties, if all goes well, are to do nothing. AI’s captain the ship and they have never failed. Until now.

Shell awakes to find the ship, Ragtime, has arrived at the colony world Bloodroot but the AI is barely functioning. In addition, 31 of the 1000 sleeping passengers are dead. An investigator from Bloodroot, Fin, is sent to investigate. Shell is trying to keep the ship operating while Fin and his partner, Salvo, try to find a murderer. Someone, or something, is working against them. It’s a race to save the ship and solve the crime before an already bad situation takes a turn for the worse.

Thompson does a great job building both characters and suspense. The characters are complex and grow over the course of the novel. The perspective shifts between a number of perspectives which aids both in developing the characters and the central mystery. He reveals more and more about the relationship between earth, the colony, and the local space station, as well as a very realistic look at space travel. The pacing from the first half of the book is quite different from the latter half as a mystery that was slowly played to begin is filled in much faster in the latter half. The excitement factor definitely ratches up at the end.

The human, artificial intelligence, and alien characters all hold your attention. There is a lot of emotional depth to these characters and you really grow to care about them. The mystery, ultimately, becomes secondary to the arc that these characters go through. Despite some uneven pacing, this is a book with a lot of suspense and it will have you thinking long after you reach the last page.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.