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It’s In the Water

Author: Erin Bowman

Zombies? Isolation? Creepy space planets with ice cold waters harboring wavy black seaweed? Inept crews, running out of oxygen with no true weapons? A parasite with an insatiable desire for a host? A self-destruction warning echoing down blood-soaked corridors? Sign me up because these are some of my favorite things!

Contagion is told from several viewpoints, and we begin the book by briefly meeting our characters / future zombie chow. There’s Thea, the intern who has landed it big by working for the famous Lisbeth, an aging scientist with a specialized study of Corrarium, which is the big money maker (think oil) of this truly universal economy. Working with this expert will set Thea up for a bright future. Never mind if the shifty doctor is hiding something. . .

Then there is Nova, a disappointed pilot, who due to minor vision problems was rejected as a fighter pilot and works flying private shuttles for the Hevetz company, who owns this mission. Nova has a crush on for Dylan, the unhinged, completely unqualified captain, and is spending her days counting Dylan’s smiles and hoping to garner the other woman’s admiration.

Nova’s cousin, Sullivan, is along for the ride as a mechanic. He is joined by several tech guys, Toby and Cleaver, all of whom are jaded by the company’s greediness and a growing political dissent associated with the all-powerful resource of Corrarium. But don’t get too attached to them (just saying).

As these seven work together on an average, unexciting research mission, there’s a sudden SOS in the middle of a dramatic storm. They are the only nearby crew available. They’re inexperienced and unprepared, but in evil-company style, Hevetz sends them to the plant of Achlys to aid the Black Quarry crew stationed there. Of course, when they get there, they discover carnage and a sole survivor with an unlikely story, as well as warnings written in blood. The next step? Get isolated and explore, of course!

Image by Fran Soto from Pixabay

As the story unfolds rapidly, paranoia gives way to straight up danger. No one can be trusted. The dead here aren’t quite dead; something in an ice-cold river is regenerating them, and those undead have only one objective: to infect the living. This parasite is looking for something – the perfect host – and it’s a fight against time (and some very, very bad decisions) to save the infected and flee the planet. Of course . . . big evil company is still out there, and if this pestilence is, say, marketable, that could take the threat to a universal level. Sometimes the dead should stay buried.

Contagion was a fun, action-based book. Despite the 400+ pages, it reads quickly. It doesn’t take long for us to push the introductions aside with Nova, Thea, and Coen (the lone Black Quarry survivor) emerging as the main point-of-view characters. Once the crew touches down on the inhospitable, under-described, standard sci-fi plant of Achlys, things start happening very quickly and we’re rightfully suspicious of everyone. There isn’t time for fear to build, because this is no sluggish monster and these zombies have some skill, World War Z style. Horror turns to action and the rate of infection is rapid pace. In the end, we have a whole lot of bodies. A whole lot. Also, these zombies can open doors . . . so that’s a problem.

I’m normally more of a character-based person, but I enjoyed the fact that Contagion was fast, nightmarish, capturing the seeming reality of events spiraling out of control and rapid decision making gone wrong. Still . . . if we’d had a few less people to follow and gotten more into their hearts before the spread started, it would have been nice. As it was, I was invested in the storyline (what kind of parasite is this, and what’s in that creepy black-water river), but I didn’t really care when the characters died. And they died a lot. A LOT. It’s like a Shakespeare story. There’s a heap of bodies at the end, and pretty much everyone has a knife in their back (metaphorically speaking).

But hey, sometimes it’s about the story and not the characters. Who has time to reveal their soul anyway while running from zombies on a barren planet with no oxygen? But . . . what about the characters’ brains? Did they leave those behind, because the decision making here is stereotypical horror movie bad (ok, maybe even worse).

Image by Peter Schmidt from Pixabay

Let’s start with Dylan. It is never clear why Nova is so enamored by this woman. Their non-relationship is never really explored, and so this tie, which ends up being important, is weak. What we do see of Dylan makes us want to feed her to the parasite. She abandons standard operating procedures continually, ostensibly because her father (who got her this fancy job at a young age) is part of the Black Quarry crew. But the Dylan we know – it’s hard to imagine her loving her father, much less risking her safety and everyone else for him. Now, it could be justified, but it certainly needed to be more subtle, and she needed to attempt to coat the lies in some logic. As it is, she gives the dumbest orders, which all her subordinates complain about but follow. Orders like searching the abandoned ship when Hevetz said not to . . . like don’t send any comms, like go down into that creepy river and grab out one of the bodies floating on the surface, because what could possibly go wrong there? And, of course, Dylan is trigger happy, ending one major plot line for seemingly no reason. Really Dylan, haven’t the infected gotten enough of your crew already?

Later, as circumstances leave Dylan slightly more repentant, Nova takes on the mantle of dumb decisions and risks not just her remaining crew but the whole universe over a crush . . . over an unfounded crush on a woman she now admits she neither likes nor respects . . . because that one business lunch they had was apparently that great? Like . . . what?

But it’s not all complaint. There is some imagination and creativity here, and Thea and Coen certainly have a better-established interaction and characterization. The cliffhanger leaves it with them, showing that they will be the stars of the sequel, where we move off planet and confront the corrupt corporation / military. I had to go ahead and buy the next book, because while Contagion wasn’t perfect it was certainly . . . contagious . . . and I was addicted to turning pages and breathlessly wondering what would happen next. Plus, it IS space zombies, so how can I resist that? I just hope the sequel will keep the pulse pounding while slowing down just a bit to let us savor the horror and connect with Thea and Coen. Also . . . someone should get Nova some therapy and explain to her what a good date is vs what a bad date is  . . . because really, Dylan?

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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