The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough

Published by Del Rey on July 30, 2013

An alien disease has laid waste to Earth. The disease killed most people, but about 10 percent of its victims survive in a devolved, subhuman state. They are not zombies in name, but they act like zombies. It seems to be an unwritten law of the decade that no science fiction novel is complete without zombies. In any event, the only safe place on Earth is within the protective field that extends nine kilometers from the space elevator in Darwin, Australia. The elevator is a gift from aliens who never introduced themselves. The disease is also an alien gift. Why did the aliens deliver a gift that is both wondrous and destructive? More importantly, are they coming back? Unfortunately, most of the readers' questions go unanswered. Fortunately, The Darwin Elevator (book one of The Dire Earth cycle) is a promising start to a series that presumably will provide the answers before it ends.

Skyler Luiken and his crew are among the few who are immune to the disease. They are scavengers who travel outside the protective field to find goods they can sell to inhabitants of the Orbitals. The Orbitals can only be reached by the space elevator, but unexplained power fluctuations have shut it down. The man who decides whether to restart the elevator is Russell Blackfield, the evil administrator in charge of Nightcliff, the Darwin-based station that handles elevator transit. A good bit of political drama comes from the tension between the residents of Darwin, who depend on Orbital farms for food, and the residents of the Orbitals, who depend on Darwin for water and oxygen. Blackfield's position gives him a great deal of power, but like all evil administrators, he wants more.

Tania Sharma, an Orbital scientist, and her boss, Neil Platz (who, like Blackfield, is driven by an agenda of his own), have a theory about the aliens. To test the theory (based in part on knowledge of the aliens that Platz is keeping to himself), Tania needs data that can only be acquired outside the protective field. Skyler and his crew are called upon to undertake a dangerous mission to Japan to recover the data. The plot moves forward from there.

Two things make this story work. First, the characters are fun. They aren't deep, but they have enough personality to make it easy for a reader to cheer for, or root against, them. Russell is a power-hungry, nightmare bureaucrat, while Skyler is an insecure but basically decent adventurer. Second, while the story isn't entirely original and certainly isn't ground-breaking, it moves quickly enough to maintain interest. The story is more action-dependent than idea-dependent, but the mystery of the aliens' purpose in constructing the elevator and contaminating the Earth holds sufficient intrigue to feed the reader's imagination.

Jason Hough's writing style tends to be uninspired ("Skyler led the way, moving as fast as his legs would carry him") but it's serviceable. I could have lived without all the chase scenes involving zombies (excuse me, subhumans). They detract from the mild intelligence that otherwise characterizes the story, and the conflict between Russell and Platz generates enough action without tossing subhumans into the mix. Readers who can't get enough zombies will probably disagree. In any event, it's too soon to judge the subhuman plot element. Perhaps the next book will provide a more credible explanation for the subhumans than "readers really dig zombies." In any event, I look forward to reading it.

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