And so begins his brief and rather frenetic adventure. He needs to figure out who he is, what his purpose may be, and what the heck is happening with Ship, or he’ll die. He wakes up cold and naked and without a memory, his only companion a mean little girl, on board a gigantic spaceship called “Ship”… whatever should he do? Why, he should move forward of course, forward, ever forward! Otherwise gigantic monsters out of some monster’s imagination will collect and/or devour him. I feel like all this has been done before - and better. Borrows heavily from Pandorum, and lightly from Resident Evil and Annihilation. Tl dr - Confusing and vaguely unsatisfying. And for another thing, they lack any sense of urgency. You can't get a clear picture of what's going on, for one thing. The scary horror scenes are not effective. The characters are neither fleshed-out nor compelling. His descriptions of the monsters - and alien-like people - were sorely lacking and left me unable to really form any sort of mental picture for them. Even when I was being provided with 'explanations,' I was still a little shaky about what was going on - and not in a fun, Jeff Vandermeer sort of way. I also found Bear's writing style to be confusing and vaguely perplexing. Pandorum is so similar to this, and so much better - I couldn't stop making comparisons throughout the whole thing. Perhaps I am just too well-versed in Sci-Fi to enjoy this book. There were also strong elements of Annihilation and Resident Evil.

PANDORUM isn't the only source material this is borrowing from. This amazing film starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster is eerily similar to this book - except much better executed. Together he and the little girl find other crew members who have survived, and they try to piece together what happened to the ship and how they can fix it.Įver hear of the film PANDORUM? I highly recommend it. Following the little girl, chasing the heat, always seeking water, food and clothes (stripped off the dead bodies of less fortunate crew members), the narrator has no idea what is really going on. Disoriented, with no knowledge of his name or his history, our naked narrator flees from the various monsters and machines on the ship which seek to kill him.

Our narrator emerges from an amniotic sac, awakened by a little girl, who urges him to hurry. Traveling through space for hundreds if not thousands of years, the passengers kept in cryosleep. I fully expected this book to be awesome, and I was disappointed.Ī ship is sent from Earth to colonize a new planet.

Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear