Refractions by MV Melcer

I would like to thank the author for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Storm Publishing

Published – Out Now

Price – £10.99 paperback £2.99 Kindle eBook

A DISTANT COLONY SHROUDED IN SILENCE.
In the vast expanse of space, Bethesda – humanity's first extra-solar colony and home to a thriving population of adults and children – has ceased all communication with Earth.

A DEADLY RESCUE MISSION.
Nathalie Hart only joined the New Horizons interstellar rescue expedition to escape the pain and guilt after her sister’s senseless death. But when she’s wrenched out of cryo-sleep far too early, she realises something has gone very wrong on board…

SABOTAGE. MURDER. BETRAYAL.
As the ship's alarms blare and smoke fills the corridors, Nathalie finds herself thrust into command amidst a crew of strangers, each harbouring their own secrets. A scrawled threat in her cabin, written in a language only she knows, confirms her suspicions. Someone on board will do anything to stop them reaching the colony and revealing Bethesda’s secrets.

Surrounded by deceit, and with Earth a distant memory, Nathalie must decide who she can trust as they desperately race towards the unknown horrors of Bethesda.

A deadly secret threatens everyone back on Earth. And if their mission fails, five-thousand innocent lives hang in the balance…

The challenge of space is possibly not simply touching the final frontier but what it means for humanity. Will it be the start of a new age of us seeing ourselves as one species united or will all our daily squabbles and human weaknesses follow us as they have for some many other frontier crossing missions over the centuries? This is handled expertly in the gripping SF thriller Refractions by MV Melcer that delivers a great mystery to solve in space but also has a lot to say about being human.

Nathalie Hart the pilot of The Samaritan awakes over twenty years after leaving Earth but not just as her ship enters its orbit but out in deep space to find a deadly fire is sweeping the ship. Crew members are lost and that includes the Captain. Disaster is averted but The Samaritan must continue its mission to find out what has happened to the first human non-terrestrial colony of over five thousand people, Bethsheba. This has entered radio silence for decades after initially showing that there could be life outside a planet that struggled with disease, a climate out of control and constant violence. A crew that primarily comprises the two main power blocs of China and the US are automatically suspicious of each other’s motives, Nathalie finds a warning of a saboteur on the ship makes things even more suspicious and by virtue of being the neutral Canadian is tolerated as the new Commander of the ship. But Bethsheba seems silent and more disasters await especially as the news from Earth suggests an even deadlier war is erupting light years away.

This is an incredibly impressive novel that takes the familiar idea of the interstellar rescue mission and gives it a twenty-first century perspective especially in its focus on the way we behave under pressure. Melcer drops us in the deep end playing with time and then with action sequences. You’ll spot some chapters going a little back in time to before Nathalie joins her crew and we find her ins a desperate situation as her sister, brother-in-law and their two young children are trapped in what could be a pandemic style situation without the right access to medication. The chapter tells us upfront this has not ended well and has helped push Nathalie into the situation she has gotten herself in. It’s a very clever way of both giving the novel motivations for our main character but I also loved that this gives us the feeling of living on an earth that is incredibly chaotic and dangerous. We revisit this period a few times across the novel and this dangerous situation provides the backdrop for the mission out in space as the power struggles, economics and biases of Earth are all carried out in space.

The scenes on the Samaritan are equally fascinating straight off after a thrilling fire in a spaceship scenario where we feel the near terror of a situation that could be catastrophic in the blink of an eye with Nathalie having to make life-saving decisions there and then. In Melcer’s world we find the while planet was rocked by the event now nicknamed the Two Horseman’ Climate Change and Disease that wrecked the world and the economy. The US has survived by taking a firmly religious stance and Bethsheba is very much a religious mission just as much one of testing what we could do outside Earth. China too has taken on a key role, and they have developed key technology including ship drives and the impressive biotechnology Mind-Link where users can access technology by thought alone. All technological secrets jealously guarded. Nathalie finds the tensions of the two groups are rising after the fire and both are suspecting the other of the worst behaviours. When we find Bethsheba empty is that simply the danger of space travel or have these international tensions already broken out yet again?

What follows is then part SF mystery with a really interesting explanation for what has happened and the ever-escalating crew tensions that start to fracture the crew and divide the groups into parties all suspecting one of the other and Nathalie herself has an evidence trail to point her in certain directions. An enigmatic engineer, a smooth preacher and a terse security officer are Nathalie’s main quasi-suspects, and we feel the ups and down of the investigation. Melcer then adds in the feeds back from earth which further amplify everyone’s worse feels about the other. The one hope – these are all professionals, and we see a crew still trying to do their best. But which part of their nature will survive? Nathalie being the seemingly neutral figure can arbitrate but her own recent past on earth starts to bleed through. The whole story is told by her, and we feel her warring natures under the surface she is good-hearted, beating herself up for her own mistakes and trying to do her best. She is a great character not perfect in any way but one we soon find ourselves rooting for.

The final third throws some unexpected elements into the mix which move us more into action story territory, but I do think have some subtle undercurrents about the human instinct to leap to suspicion in a conspiracy theory and not notice who pulls the strings. An undercurrent that in our social media-focused nightmarish world we may recognise quite a bit of.

Refractions is the start of a new series so while this storyline is wrapped up very well, there are hints as to the future direction that the surviving cast will now go in. I am very interested to see what Melcer does with that next. It is an extremely promising start to a new series and a writer to watch out for. Just what I love to read and highly recommended!