HOLLOW SPACE: VENTURE is the first book in the Xantoverse series, brought to us by TF Grant and Colin F Barnes. This book, while highly unexpected, is yet another example of the powers of co-authorship. It’s also an example of excellent space opera.
HOLLOW SPACE brings us to a world that is familiar, but not. When Sara Lorelle and essentially the final handful of the human race make a last-ditch lightspeed jump to escape the aliens wiping them out, they end up in a ship graveyard, where there are no stars. Technology fails in Hollow Space. People are trapped, and the rules have changed as a result of it.
This idea stood out to me immediately, and the authors take every advantage of the concept. The port-ship of Haven, where Sara and her friends end up, is a place based on trade. Everything is bartered, everything is a deal, and if you don’t know how to look after yourself and take what you need, you’ll be in someone’s debt quickly. Barnes and Grant make it look easy, the way Haven’s culture is explained so fast that even our protagonist doesn’t have time to wrap her head around it.
And let’s not forget the aliens.
In a short space, Barnes and Grant not only introduce a small handful of separate alien races, but give them space to stand out and break from their own established cultural stereotypes. Every sentient species has a black sheep variant, which keeps the novel falling into the trap of giving aliens exactly one defining trait.
I will say that some of these aliens surprised me; their abilities and characteristics were not unrealistic, exactly, but they took the novel away from an otherwise firmly science-fictional environment, edging toward space fantasy. Without spoiling, some of the creatures and races were a bit jarring in their capabilities, and this took some getting used to.
Despite this, HOLLOW SPACE is self-aware. It’s a book engineered to be fun, and it knows that. The action scenes are fun but not gratuitous, and never sacrifice the plot. It’s not what I would call hard science fiction, but there are a few details I appreciated, regarding the physics of space travel and the difficulties of navigating a place where there are no directions. It has strong characters, an engaging plot, and a fun world.
The strongest weakness of the novel could be that it leaves a few elements unexplained in order to set the stage for sequels. This is clearly a rich, diverse world, but the “big questions” are introduced rather abruptly, and the search to answer them is quickly left aside, to be explored later. HOLLOW SPACE’s ending manages to wrap up the character arcs and the plot, while also gearing you up for the next adventure, which was great, but I would have liked a slightly smoother integration of the big ideas.
There’s a lot to recommend this book. Barnes and Grant have made it very easy to get hands on a copy for cheap, or free at Kindle Unlimited. It is absolutely worth your money and time to pick this one up. It reminded me why I liked reviewing, and I’m jazzed up for the next installments in the series, as well as the supplemental works already floating around. Learn more at Xantoverse, and enjoy an energized new space opera.
Jared W. Cooper is a Jersey-born writer, gamer, and mostly-coherent genre geek. Between slush reading, writing groups, and editing, he consumes short stories like most people breathe. His fiction has appeared in Bastion Science fiction. His essays and other reviews can be found, sporadically, at Jaredwcooper.org
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