Void Station One

Thanks to the publisher for sending me an arc of this book to review in advance!

Void Station One is a melancholic exploration of one's self and self worth set in an interesting, far future where humans have stretched throughout the galaxy. Despite some stumbles and being largely introspective, there was enough story to keep me intrigued, and even had some small twists along that way that made this an easy read.

We follow Cole, a deeply sad man who is struggling to find purpose in life after his beloved wife left him. He works basically as a deep space trucker, collecting salvage from wherever his agency sends him, but lately he's been taking the farthest deep space jobs located at the Void Stations, or stations that were initially set up during humanity's initial traversal into space. These stations have long been abandoned, and they take a long time to get to. Even though very fast space travel exist, it still takes many many years to travel to these places, thus preservation drugs and cryo sleep is used to preserve the traveler, but that doesn't stop time for when they return home and many years have passed since they departed. This adds to Cole's sense of meaninglessness, and he decides to take on the Void Station One assignment, a station that is about to fall into a black hole so the window for recovering salvage is tight. He resolves to go to the station and stay on it, allowing the black hole to kill him. However, upon arrival, he encounters the last thing he expected.

The first thing that you need to know about this is, as I mentioned before, it is extremely introspective. There are moments of dialogue, and there are moments of exposition and world building, but the majority of the book is a narration of Cole's spiraling depression and bleak outlook on life, with a healthy dose of philosophical existentialism. This is a science fiction novel, and there are beats that advance the plot but it feels that this is really supposed to challenge you to confront your own sense of self worth, and where you draw meaning in your life. So if you're looking for an action packed adventure, this isn't it.

While I do enjoy introspective stories, particularly science fiction based, there were moments of this where I felt the pacing was severely limping along. There was a lot of repetition during these parts in particular that had me skimming to get to the next conversation or something.

With regard to structure, the story was fine. There was a lot of set up to get Cole to where he was going, but I didn't mind it. Characters were interesting. Without spoilers, Cole as a character did have development, but it didn't feel fully deserved in my opinion. He had epiphanies and revelations that changed him, but they seemed rushed and contradictory to what felt like his stagnant nature, but with so few characters to begin with and the short length of the book, I suppose it makes sense that the character development felt rushed. Also the ending chapters of the book felt drawn out at times. Several chapters ended with language that I felt would be fitting for the end of the book, only for me to turn the page and realize it was still going.

Overall, I enjoyed this. There was some tightening up that could have been done, but I thought it was good. If you like the way Becky Chambers approaches themes of character and self mixed with sci fi, you'll like this (but not necessarily if you like the hopepunk themes because this isn't the book for you). If you like a quiet narrative where you get to sit with the thoughts of a character, pick this up.