Blog Tour: Gallowglass – S.J. Morden*

The year is 2069, and the earth is in flux. Whole nations are being wiped off the map by climate change. Desperate for new resources, the space race has exploded back into life.
Corporations seek ever greater profits off-world. They offer immense rewards to anyone who can claim space’s resources in their name. The bounty on a single asteroid rivals the GDP of entire countries, so every trick, legal or not, is used to win.
Jack, the scion of a shipping magnate, is desperate to escape earth and joins a team chasing down an asteroid. But the ship he’s on is full of desperate people – each one needing the riches claiming the asteroid will bring them, and they’re willing to do anything if it means getting there first.

Because in Space, there are no prizes for coming second. It’s all or nothing: riches beyond measure, or dying alone in the dark.

My thoughts:

This was really good once it got going. I enjoyed the author’s One Way, so I knew that once Jack got into space, the plot would be cracking along at a brilliant pace and would be so much more than it first seemed.

Jack is escaping from his uber wealthy parents, who are obsessed with living forever, determined to carve out something for himself, whatever that may be.

Earth is dying, climate refugees are desperate to find new home and one way to do that is to stake their claim on asteroids out in space, ideally ones rich in mining rights. You do this by sending out a gallowglass – they stake the claim and then hunker down in cyro-sleep to guard it, waiting for a crew like the one Jack joins to come and get them and their rock.

Out in space however, lots of things can go horribly wrong, as it is for Jack. The mismatched crew the captain has cobbled together struggle to get along and more than one of them has their own agenda.

Clever, inventive and quite dark, this had me hooked all the way through. Jack’s an interesting character, when everyone else wishes to get rich, he wants to leave that behind and just live his own life. Blending science fact with futuristic fiction, this is a smart space thriller with plenty of action and intrigue.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.