Offworld Robin Parrish

Offworld delves into a world where astronauts from the first Mars’ mission return to find earth empty. The one exception? A woman named Mae. Soon the astronauts and Mae are in a race for their lives as the empty appearance of earth changes and they aren’t as alone as they first feared—and now wish they were.

Three things about Offworld by Robin Parrish: It was recommendable, it wasn’t a thriller, and it’s not an easy read. Working from those points, Offworld was good. It was well thought out, and I wasn’t left ranting over plot holes.

Problems: For the first half of the book I felt like it lagged character wise. I could not get a feel for who I was supposed to cheer for and while personalities were reasonably defined in each astronaut, I struggled with attaching to everyone, including Chris. As well as a  few of the dream sequences with Chris feeling very repetitive. Also, I was looking for Christian content, found none.(Except a few extremely ambiguous comments at the end..from the grave of all things.)

Positives!: The blackout/dream sequences Chris has throughout gave us a good picture of how he survived that mission on mars and where he was for 18 hours of the mission. They added a huge amount to connecting with Chris as a character and were tied in wonderfully at the end—even if I don’t totally get it.
The big positive was, THE PREMISE. Finally someone had people on earth disappear without it being a covert governmental job(though a general was involved), without it being a virus, and without it being aliens!

This book was labeled as suspense but I feel “Speculative” fiction is much closer to the truth.

Conclusion: The book didn’t lend itself to easy reading or latching onto the characters, for the most part at least. But with a premise this good it is still recommendable/readable.

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