The Ark
Children of a Dead Earth Book One
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Introducing a thrilling deep-space science fiction mystery series in the tradition of James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse
When a geneticist goes missing aboard a generation ship, it’s up to sports star Bryan Benson to solve the mystery before landfall.
Humankind has escaped a dying Earth and set out to find a new home among the stars aboard an immense generation spaceship, affectionately named the Ark. Bryan Benson is the Ark’s greatest living sports hero, enjoying retirement working as a detective in Avalon, his home module. The hours are good, the work is easy, and the perks can’t be beat.
But when a crew member goes missing, Benson is thrust into the center of an ever-expanding web of deception, secrets, and violence that overturns everything he knows about living on the Ark and threatens everyone aboard. As the last remnants of humanity hurtle towards their salvation, Benson finds himself in a desperate race to unravel the conspiracy before a madman turns mankind’s home into its tomb.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When a conspiracy threatens the last shreds of humanity, salvation comes in the form of a sports star turned detective. Tomlinson's debut novel follows the exploits of Bryan Benson, the much-beloved detective of Avalon, one of two habitat modules on the Ark spaceship that's carrying humans away from a doomed Earth. As the Ark's bourgeois crew prepares to finally land on an alien planet, a geneticist is reported missing. When Benson tugs at the thread of the mystery, his entire reality unravels around him, and he delves into the underbelly of the Ark to find the truth among stolen paintings, partisan politics, and a cult leader who threatens to destroy everything Benson loves. Tomlinson's pacing is beyond reproach, as he deftly crafts an ever more elaborate web of intrigue within the self-contained setting. The book's few, small hiccups crop up mainly when Tomlinson attempts to work in a piece of 20th-century pop culture that's simply out of sync with his timeline, or when his word choice becomes repetitive. Tomlinson's female characters are refreshingly nuanced, and his use of Chekov's (sometimes literal) gun is sound enough to gloss over the rough patches in this impressive first novel.
