From Darkest Skies is the debut novel from Sam Peters (review copy from Gollancz). It's a crime thriller set on a colony world in space. Agent Keon Rause is newly returned home and investigating the deth from drug overdose of a celebrity, while on the side investigating the death of his wife in a terrorist attack several years previously.

This is solid and dependable stuff. Think of a mismatched crew of investigators, led by Rause, all with different skills and mysterious backgrounds. Think of a simple investigation that reveals a major conspiracy that threatens the world. Think of signs that the wife's death was not all it appeared to be. You know what to expect with this kind of thing.

The book does have some interesting aspects to it. Agent Rause has created an illegal android analogue of his late wife, Alysha, with a personality matrix built from everything that has been recorded of her life, opinions and what she did and believed. Rause uses it as a comfort as he fails to come to terms with her death. But it's an imperfect copy, lacking Alysha's inner life and deepest thoughts. The android is unable to help him piece together what motivated Alysha to run away in her final hours of life and find herself on a train that was blown up by terrorists. From Darkest Skies asks us how well we can ever know a person, even in a world of omni-present social media and surveillance.

Some interesting world-building is hinted at too. Alien beings called The Masters were responsible for the destruction of large parts of Earth, and for dispersing its population throughout the universe on a number of colony worlds. This piece of history is only mentioned in passing in this novel, but if offers some fascinating hints of where future books could go.

I will watch with interest to see what Peters comes up with next. This is a promising debut.

Goodreads rating: 3*

This is an imaginative and very enjoyable SF novel that teases us constantly . There is a sympathetic lead with a troubled background. The loss of his wife, Alysha, in a mysterious accident caused Keon Rause to turn his back on his home planet. Further trouble on earth means he has to return to Magenta and start to address the actual circumstances of her death. This is further complicated by his construction of an artificial Alysha containing his dead wife's memories and personalities who may or may not be helping in his quest. Just when he thinks he should be letting go he finds there is a much bigger conspiracy at play.
Very readable and not overloaded with techy speak this is a great book which paints a picture of a very different world which nevertheless, of course is just like ours. Trust no one.

I AM SPEECHLESS.

But only metaphorically, because, y'know, I'm typing this right now.

But goddamn, this was phenomenal.

The plot was absolutely incredible and I'm trying to figure out how to convey to you how amazing it is without giving it away. It is astonishingly complex and clever, and completely unpredictable, especially the ending. There was a cliffhanger, but the best sort; where the main mystery is wrapped up, but suddenly SURPRISE! here's this extra thing that you literally weren't expecting at all!!

It was also very well-written, with complex and interesting characters that I really connected to throughout, especially the protagonist, Keon. Furthermore, the world-building was expertly done. In the beginning Peters somehow managed to explain about the Masters and why humans were scattered onto different planets without info-dumping, which I was really impressed by.

This was a super original and intriguing futuristic sci-fi thriller, and a must for all sci-fi fans. I'd also recommend it for anyone who likes mysteries and thrillers even if they're not that into sci-fi.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It tells the story of Keon Rause, an investigative officer whose wife died in a terrorist bombing 5 years ago and his reluctant return to his home planet, Magenta to rejoin his old life. The plot is very intricate and I found it a little hard to keep straight, but I think this was because I sometimes found my attention drifting as I was reading. It just wasn't as compelling as the content should have made it and I honestly cannot put my finger on why. The characters were all quite interesting, albeit somewhat unbelievable, and the many plot twists with drugs and conspiracies and media moguls and immigration protests are well constructed and thought out. For some reason. I just didn't connect with it, but I feel confident in saying that I know it will appeal to people who like spy thrillers or sci-fi with a detective bent.

I received an ARC through Goodreads competition as well as on here, and I thought the physical book would allow me to get into it a bit more where the kindle version didn't.

I was wrong. Unfortunately I never connected to the main character or Liss, and while I enjoyed the worldbuilding it just didn't sit very well with me in characterisation. I didn't get it, or understand the motives, so it left me feeling a little flat.

This noir thriller has a wonderful setting – the planet Magenta has an unfriendly, heavy gravity and terrible weather, to the extent that buildings are more like bunkers in order to survive the terrible storms and the only transport system is an underground railway. Peters’ scene setting is spot on, establishing the mood music of this classy murder mystery – an important component in noir crime. The protagonist is also suitably moody with a full suite of emotional luggage on account of his wife’s death – it has haunted him that although the person who actually set off the bomb was brought to justice, the conspiracy behind the crime was never fully uncovered. In a desperate attempt to try to uncover Alysha’s last movements – Rause has no idea why she cleaned out their bank account and what she was doing on the train in the first place – he has Liss constructed, based on every scrap of information he possesses about Alysha. However, this leaves him with a construct who looks, sounds and acts like his dead wife – so five years on he is no closer to coming to terms with his loss.

It’s a great premise. Peters drops us in the middle of this world, which I really loved – though initially I slightly struggled with the welter of unfamiliar names, though by the time I was 20% into the story, I had become sufficiently acclimatised to the world this was no longer a problem. And the reason for their unfamiliarity became apparent well before the end.

This police procedural is tightly constructed, with various clues and a number of suspects who are considered by Rause and his team. I also thoroughly enjoyed the cast of supporting characters – Rangesh, who has been undercover with the drugs squad, bounces off the page with his West Coast slang and his unorthodox fashion sense – Rause is rocked when he turns up for duty in a flamboyantly coloured caftan. Rangesh provides much of the welcome shafts of humour in amongst Rause’s gritted determination to discover what happened to his wife.

Alongside the murder mystery, Peters also raises the problem of how to grieve when technology can provide a replacement with a strong likeness to the dead person; there are also issues around the artefacts left behind by a powerful alien race as various powerful corporations race to try and uncover their secrets; Magenta is a colony world with a sudden influx of immigrants from Earth which is also causing resentment. Without losing pace or focus, we get an insight into these problems along with others bubbling under the surface that add to the texture and richness of this world. Peters’ unfussy style keeps things moving at a fair clip as the complex case of a series of drugs-related deaths cris-crosses the five-year-old bombing incident. Like many noir thrillers, this is one where you need to pay attention or you’ll miss something vital. Indeed at the end, I found myself backtracking to ensure I fully understood what was going on, as the denouement unspooled with something of a rush and it took me a couple of goes before I worked out all the ramifications – though I’ll freely admit I wasn’t at my shiny best at the time.

I was heartened to note there are plenty of dangling plotpoints, which I’m hoping will mean there will be a second book set in this world – and if there is, then I’ll be tracking it down. This is a world I very much want to dive back into.

While I obtained the arc of From Darkest Skies from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.
8/10

From Darkest Skies by Sam Peters

It is five years now since the death of Alysha, the wife of agent Keona Rause. Also an agent, Alysha was blown up on a night train as it made its way across their home world of Magenta. Rause doesn’t understand why Alysha was on that train. It wasn’t for passengers. She and a small group of other people had smuggled themselves aboard and they were blown up by a bomber, later caught. He can only assume that Alysha was following leads to a case. But whatever it was, the knowledge died with her and, besides, Rause was forcibly removed from investigations into the bombing, sent to Earth on a secondment for five years. That ended in disgrace when the alien artefact he had been guarding was stolen almost from under his nose. Rause is now back in Magenta, suffering from the terrible increase in gravity, getting used to the endless pummelling of Magenta’s rain, and investigating the death of one of the planet’s very few golden socialites. But Rause has an itch he has to scratch – why was his wife on that train?

Rause is not entirely alone. After his wife’s death, he had her memories and digital presence uploaded into a physical walking, talking ‘shell’. Its intelligence is also incorporated into his ‘Servant’, the AI that everyone carries around inside their brain, easing their way through life. But Liss, as he calls it/her, is completely illegal. And whether Liss is a help or hindrance is another matter entirely as Rause works through his feelings for a wife he mourns and her reconstructed digital presence which he struggles to understand.

The premise of From Darkest Skies is an extremely compelling one, combining some of the familiar ideas of crime fiction with the wonder of its science fiction setting on Magenta, complemented by some intriguing technology. Magenta is an extraordinary planet, named for the violet hue its land and water derives from its ‘organic rock-eating purple alien dust’. It is both beautiful and hostile, as too is its appalling weather which batters the plant with killer winds and painful, stabbing rain for days on end. But the story of how humans reached Magenta is one of the most fascinating things of all about From Darkest Skies. The novel is overshadowed by the enigmatic Masters, the alien race that altered Earth in terrible ways from which it can never recover before disappearing as mysteriously as they arrived. Their intent seemed to be to move humans across the Galaxy, giving them the technology to move freely, while leaving others hopelessly stranded. But why?

From Darkest Skies raises lots of questions, about the Masters, about Alysha, about the murdered socialite and about life as a whole on this unfriendly yet striking planet of Magenta. Sam Peters makes the reader want to know the answers every bit as much as Rause who is barely holding on. I liked Rause very much indeed. I felt for his plight. And I also cared for his fellow agents, some of whom he’d known before and others he hadn’t. They are a colourful bunch, likeable yet crotchety. But who wouldn’t be crotchety on this strange planet?

Sam Peters blends crime and science fiction well. The plotting is excellent and so too is the use of technology. It’s not overplayed but it is intriguing. This is a future society, one shaped by the Masters, apocalypse, the media (social and otherwise) and by a powerful sense of distance from Earth, a distance that is brought home every minute of the day by the unrelenting force of gravity. We’re familiar with walking, talking AIs but I did find Liss pleasingly unusual and unknowable. I really felt for Rause. My only issue would be the difficulty I had remembering some of the unusual names.

From Darkest Skies is a debut novel and it is a fine one. I would definitely welcome another novel set in this enigmatic world of Magenta and the Masters – there is so much more I want to know about both – but I’ll be very happy to go wherever Sam Peters takes us next.

Continuing with my self-imposed mission to diversify my reading, I chose this one to try as I have recently had a good outing with sci-fi as a genre and this one also piqued my crime fiction interest. Keon Rouse is a government agent and native of Magenta. His story here starts when his work assignment on Gibraltar has been cut short due to an incident that he may or may not have been involved in. We also learn early on that his wife, Alysha, is dead, in a bombing on a night-goods-train. I say dead, she is to all intents and purposes, although he does have a rather nifty AI version of her, who he names Liss, who he is using to try and solve her own murder. After re-acclimatising to Magenta's strong gravity, Keon meets with his team, some assigned to him, others requested by him, hand picked to assist him with his side-mission. Find out who killed his wife, and why?
On the whole, I enjoyed this foray into the sci-fi world. I do admit that, being not as familiar with the genre as the hard core fan, I did initially struggle a tad with some of the concepts but, instead of fighting it and trying to "get" everything, I found that doing a bit of simple "accepting" made my overall journey a lot more comfortable. Making a character list as I went also helped immensely! The crime that Keon was officially meant to investigate was interesting and I really enjoyed the puzzle solving antics of Keon and his team, especially some of the trips they made along the way. Characterisation was good, once I had the characters cemented in my head, and I found that they all had depth and individual skills that they all brought, complementing each other well. Liss, I found to be interesting. Having watched and enjoyed the new series of Westworld (which this book has been compared to) I was quite easily able to believe in her.
The story itself went along at a fair lick, but at the right speed. Certain incidents from the past were injected in just the right places to enhance the current day narrative. Description was enough to set the scene without being over intrusive. It was a little complex and convoluted at times but I pretty much managed to stay with it even with a rather busy ending!
All in all, another success story to add to my "branching out" genre wise. I have learned a few more things from this book that I will be able to take with me next time I take the plunge.

My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I was looking forward to reading this futuristic thriller I like SF and admire the authors imagination, the world that has been created is very different.I kind of liked the idea of being able to keep a facsimile of some one you loved who has died although it is a bit of a creepy idea too. I didn't feel that I connected with the main character though and struggled to get into the book because of this ,I really wish I hadn't had to work so hard to try and like it, for me it didn't flow and I became more disconnected as the book went on.It wasn't one of my best reads but I hope others like it, I guess we all look for different things in a book and this one just didn't hit the mark for me.Thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

This book is a wonderful Sci-Fi thriller with a complex story line ........ with many twist and turns that keeps the reader wondering what will happen next .

Keon Rouse has , since the death of his wife Alysha in a bombing on the colony world Magenta , spent the last five years on Earth .
After a security breach and the theft of one of the 'Masters'' artifacts from a display, for which he is held responsible - he is given just 15 hours to leave Earth and return to Magenta .
He has brought with him an illegal AI shell of Alysha , built from her data footprint .His knows his relationship with the Shell is unhealthy but he can't let her go , he still has too many unanswered questions .
Within hours of landing Rouse is ordered back to work for the Intelligence Services and is partnered with three diverse colleagues . Their case is the death of a Reality Star from a 'gen' drug overdose ......these drugs are not normally killers but their investigation leads them to believe that the drug has been modified to a specific genetic marker ----- many more user are likely to die unless they can find the source .
The more they investigate the drugs angle , the more they case begins to appear link to the people behind his wife's death .
How wide is the conspiracy ? who is trying to hamper their efforts ? and who is trying to kill them ?

The characterisation , dialogue and interactions between Keon and the members of his team make this book a enjoyable read . I hope that is not the last book in this Universe as ....... without spoiling the ending ....... many more questions arise than those answered .