Source of book: NetGalley (thank you!)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

This is a legitimately fascinating twist on the ol’ locked room mystery. The basic premise here is that when Michelle Campion, first mate of the Ragtime, wakes up after ten years in statis she discovers that, instead, of the AI having handled everything they way it should, it has been reduced to basic functions and the service bots have begun dismembering passengers. As she struggles to regain control of the ship and find out what’s happened, she’s joined by Rasheed Fin, a disgraced investigator from the colony that was the Ragtime’s original destination, along with his Artificial partner (crime solving partner, I mean, not romantic partner), and then by Laurence Biz, a retired astronaut and family friend who is the governor of nearby space station, and his half-human daughter Joké.

In the author’s note at the back, Thompson describes the book as inspired by The Murders in the Rue Morgue (a mystery to which the solution is “it was a rogue monkey”) and I kind of wish I’d known that going in, because I was expecting something more Agatha Christie-ish. Whereas actually Far From The Light of the Heaven isn’t really a whodunnit in the traditional sense—after all, despite Fin entertaining mild suspicions of Campion, the reader knows the murderer can’t be any of the POV characters, the intended target HAS to be the gazillionaire because who else deserves a hearty space murderin, and the only possible suspect is one of the other passengers currently accounted for). It’s more of a whydunit and a howdunnit, coupled with a “how do we all not die horribly in space as our ship turns against us” type situation. Taken in those those terms, Far From The Light Of Heaven is really successful: it’s a genuinely tense (and well-researched) survival situation and the various mid-point revelations are satisfying.

I think where I struggled with FFTLOH was not over the mystery or the action but with kind of wanting … more? The characters, with the possible exception of Joké who is charming and pansexual and yet far too content to bonk Fin for, as far as I could tell, no particular reason, are all really well-drawn, but they’re fighting for their lives almost every second they’re on the page so there’s very little space to let them just … breathe and be, and connect with each other. The world is equally fascinating, full of complex ideas, all of which are introduced deftly. I sincerely appreciated this organic and non-pace denting approach but at the same time, without wanting someone to drop an anvil of exposition of my head, I once again found myself wanting to spend more time in the places, and among the cultures, we are whisked through on our quick sharp trip to disaster. Although I should note that I’m not really putting this forward as an actual critique of the novel’s structure or the author’s decisions in constructing it: “I liked this book so much there wasn’t enough of it: ONE STAR.”

Ultimately FFTLOH feels like a familiar and a unique story at the same time: it’s drawing on a lot of recognisable influences, but the way they’re deployed creates something full of surprises. It’s a little bit murder mystery, a little bit space opera, a little bit gothic horror, a little bit survival adventure, all re-imagined through the lens of Afrofuturism. But it’s also about capitalism, and exploitation, particularly the exploitation of indigenous communities, the boundaries between justice and retribution, and the impossible cost of both.

Tade Thompson is an author that never fails to impress and delight me. Last year I undertook reading the Wormwood trilogy and I’m still thinking of the specific parts of it that blew my mind. An uncanny mix of mystery and political thriller mixed with samplings of new weird and biotech, Far From the Light of Heaven is equally impressive and a new undertaking for Thompson.

Set aboard the Ragtime, a colony ship piloted by an AI, we meet Michelle Campion (or Shell). Second mate to that same AI. Meeting Shell, we are introduced to this new world where humanity now lives among the stars, where AI pilot craft and never fail and of course, a mission Campion is charged with fulfilling with simple objectives. But of course, the AI does fail and Campion wakes up ten years after the launch with noone but her own wit to survive.

I loved reading from Campion’s perspective. She is brutal yet efficient and carries all those interesting layers that Thompson gives his characters. She may be set on saving and preserving the lives of over 900 passengers, but she has never been afraid in her breaking relationships with others to get this far. She may be striving to bring this mission to a safe end but her motivations, though her own, are shaped by familial pressure and expectation. She is the best Captain the Ragtime could need.

Something that always sets me up for a good read for any scifi novel, particularly space opera, is the way the author builds the world outside the ship for the reader in varying levels of detail and strive to keep both the characters or reader from reaching it’s many resources to end their conflict. As the story progresses, Shell is joined by others sent to assess the Ragtime. We have Rasheed Fin and Salvo, a disgraced enforcer and artificial person respectively, sent to investigate what’s happened aboard. There’s Larry Biz and his half human, half Lamber (a different species unique to this part of space) Joké heading off from the Lagos station from familial ties to Shell. And of course, the AI Ragtime itself, half functional and not responsive to Shell. This of course leading to the perfect closed circle mystery aboard a space craft with limited supplies for life support and more complications for the residents on board.

When I say I had no clue what to expect, I compliment Thompson directly. I was so wrapped up in this expertly plotted part of space, mostly by the mysterious nature of the Lamber species and the politics between Earth, Lagos and the Bloodroot colony that I genuinely didn’t know what might be coming. These are some of my favourite mysteries to not necessarily solve but more sit back and allow the story to take me to what solves it. There was also this really well done history of how the Lagos station came to be and how humanity even expanded out there, and it really covered some of the uglier side of how these things go as well;

‘Lagos was established by mainly Black Afrofuturists. Space is the Place. With considerable effort, all their fiscal and human resources and a rich, funky cultural history mixed with African myth and mythmaking, they willed the space station into being. More than a few white supremacists liked the idea of a large proportion of Black people leaving Earth. They were disappointed when Lagos flourished.’
pg 219

I really like smaller additions like that, they always make me far more invested in the story. It was similar in how I enjoyed the inclusion of Ireland and how it fared in the events leading up to the story in Rosewater. It’s smaller aspects like that that keep me invested, as well as the smaller call backs made to other scifi books, by either using tropes or direct references to them. There’s just something very enjoyable about the devil in the details and this book really has a lot of that.

I would highly recommend this and Tade Thompson’s Wormwood trilogy. This is a brutal, tight mystery with excellent characters and some huge potential for other explorations in this world. It’s also a perfectly accessible book for those new to scifi so definitely worth checking out for that. I want to thank Orbit Books for sending me a copy of this book for review and to Tracy for having me on the Compulsive Readers blog tour. Far From the Light of Heaven is out now.

Thanks for checking in everyone! Happy reading!

Short Version: Locked room murder mystery and intergalactic politics, what’s not to love?

Long version:

The Plot: I thoroughly enjoyed the plot. I loved the way it felt like characters and their decisions were driving events.

The Setting: All of the settings used, worked. They were all described enough that I could visualise them without bogging the book down in unnecessary details. I liked the tightness of the settings, Ragtime particularly so but they all had a snugness to them which matched the story nicely.

The Characters: I love these characters. Every single one is three dimensional, with hopes, dreams, flaws and I loved the fact that all of them (well, the humans) had a past.

The Prose: Superbly written with an economy that makes every word count. There is a tightness to the prose that matches the tightness of the setting and this adds a pleasing symmetry.

The Pace: Perfect throughout. I loved how it was confined and just as it was becoming claustrophobic a bit of the wider picture was revealed.

Conclusion: I enjoyed everything about this book, it was real pleasure to read. I loved the shade that it throws on rich people acting like the entire galaxy is their playground while doing nothing about people dying while working for them.

Who would love this: Becky Chambers and Laura Lam fans need to add this to their TBR stacks.

On a routine run the starship Ragtime, transporting thousands of colonists to the Lagos system is interrupted by the ship AI. On waking Captain Campion discovers that many of the colonists are dead, much of the computing function is disabled and there’s an artificially grown wolf on the prowl.

Tade Thompson lets his deep-space writing out of the box in this riot of the book. Deepsleep, frontier worlds, robot companions, psycho AIs, the broken antenna and multi-planetary corporations are just some of the tropes Thompson sends spinning through the void.

In the afterword Thompson says that he was influenced by Poe and the locked-room mystery. Early on this gives him some difficulty getting all the pieces onto the board. But once the detectives, suspects and victims are on board and chasing each other round the starship as its orbit degrades around them Thompson’s genre mashup has a vibrant pulpy energy. His afrofuturism is perhaps not as much as to the fore in earlier work, but this is still an engaging and fresh spin on interplanetary politics, crime and capitalism.

Review copy provided by Netgalley.

Fantastic action filled science fiction adventure. If you like your science fiction as space opera then Far from age Light of Heaven is a great choice! Very engaging characters, particularly Shell, great escapism.

Tade Thompson Far from the Light of Heaven

Far from the Light of Heaven is a locked-room mystery set in space. In imagined humanity beyond the stars. The main protagonist of the story is Michelle "Shell" Campion. Shell is a newly promoted captain desperate to prove herself aboard the Spaceship Ragtime. Captain Michelle Campion finds a bunch of her crewmembers murdered, haywire AI, and a mysterious wolf which she thinks she may all be in her imagination! Introduced into this is detective Rasheed Finn, sent with his own AI to figure out what happened and why. The more Rasheed uncovers, the more realisation begins to set in that there's a sinister plot afoot.

Far from the Light of Heaven has that readable quality, which hooked me from the first page. Much like Thompson’s previous ‘Wormwood trilogy,’ this book is a fast-paced space thriller. Tade Thompson has created a unique world for the story to take place. It is an immersive read. The characters in the book move the story along at a good pace. I felt that Shell was a very well written character, reflecting how a newly qualified, highly trained person may feel when suddenly thrust into a new reality, a situation I’m sure we can all relate to! I enjoyed figuring out who the murderer was while simultaneously wondering how the allies would survive from all the forces against them. There’s plenty of action and tension to the story. The exploration and psychology of relationships both old and new, even under the stressors of space was done well.

Tade Thompson’s writing has a compelling, readable quality to it that draws you into the story. A story that was cleverly executed and unputdownable. I hope that he revisits this well-crafted world.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an e-arc for an honest review!

After I finished Rosewater, I was pretty excited to start my next Tade Thompson book. Far From The Light of Heaven is nothing like Rosewater and at the same time, it’s similar. You’ll recognise certain recurring themes, Tade’s voice, and his imagination. I went in without reading much about it and I’m glad I did. Starting a new book without remembering the blurb is refreshing. So when the pile of dismembered bodies turns up on the pages, my interest was piqued. I had to keep reading.

The book was a varied cast of humans and non-humans, all with different motivations and interests. It’s one of those rare books where I enjoyed all of the point-of-view characters. The cast is an interesting mix considering there’s a locked room murder going on. Because why is there a wolf on board the spaceship? What happened? Who’s responsible? And how do they stay alive on this broken ship? Can Campion keep her passengers alive before the killer murders them too? I’m not good at figuring out the killer so I definitely didn’t see this coming, but maybe even more experienced whodunnit readers will enjoy this conclusion.

I really like the worlds he created, how current world politics might affect future space explorations and the underlying social commentary woven into the motives and backstory of the characters. It’s so subtle, and at the same time, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Overall, Far From the Light of Heaven is a book that’ll keep you hooked until the last page. A whodunnit in space with an unconventional cast of characters. I give it 4,5 stars. If you like Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya universe books, you’ll enjoy this one too.

Thank you Netgalley and Tade Thompson for sending me the ARC of this book!

As stated by Tade Thompson this book is not a space opera, it is a locked room thriller set in space, the ultimate locked room mystery.

This is an absolutely fantastic book with incredible writing that is definitely not what I was expecting. The writing is unconventional and took me a bit of time to get into but it lent to the story and meant that you were constantly figuring things out along with the characters. The reveal is epic. The reasoning for the reveal is so elegantly done, the introduction of this idea that progress happens at the expense of others is a fascinating one to explore in this book and hugely relevant to sci-fi as a genre but doesn't get spoken about enough. Definitely read the Afterward of this book it shows the thinking of the author and makes the book hit even harder. I loved the inclusion of Afrospiritulism and the lack of "aliens" in the traditional sense, no great sky battles no us vs them just individuals from different planets all focused on survival.

I am so glad I got to read this book it is tense captivating and thrilling and the AI threw me a bit but made me laugh as they are so inhuman their thoughts jump around in a way that would be strange in a human character. Each character was fascinating and well built and entirely human which I loved, maybe its the close contact with people at various stages of life that Tade Thompson gets from being a doctor.

I loved this author's Wormwood Trilogy when I read it a while ago so I was quite excited to get my hand on this, his latest book.
We follow Michelle (Shell) Campion as she accompanies the spaceship Ragtime, on a journey in which a thousand people are relocated. A journey that will take many years. She is just backup to a fully computerised system headed by the AI Captain. But at the time when she is scheduled to awaken, she realises that there is a big problem. Some of the people are missing. The AI is strangely unhelpful and refuses to answer her questions. And then she makes a shocking discovery. Her distress calls for help are heard by the colony below and they send a detective, Rashid Fin, to help her make sense of what is going on.
And so begins a cat and mouse, locked room, type space opera where the stakes are so high and nothing is making sense. There's mischief and mayhem aplenty as Fin and Shell try to get to the bottom of what is going on and bring the perpetrator to justice in time.
It's fresh and the world that the author has created herein is so special that, although billed as a stand alone, I really hope that the author returns to it in future books. Or even, if I may be so bold as to suggest, he develops this into a series / trilogy.
Writing is tight and the plot is intricate, well created and expertly executed. There is enough background and description to complement the narrative rather than distract from it. This means that the story gets on with itself very well. Characters are well drawn and develop nicely as the book goes on.
Pacing is also spot on and follows the narrative well all the way through. There are some rather nasty reveals along the way which keep the tension high and it ramps up all the way through until eventually, when the final shocking reveal is made, I managed to start breathing once again. Phew... what a ride that was.
All in all, a cracking addition to what is shaping up to be a rather impressive back catalogue. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

What do you need to know? This is a high flying, first-timer Campion’s first flight, not that it matters because spaceship AI never fail - right? It’s a murder mystery with almost no candidates and a wolf is on the spaceship. There are a lot of things going on but Thompson holds it together. This is not a space opera, this is less character driven than plot driven (not to be confused with action-heavy) but we do learn about everyone involved and even a bit about the authorities of the colonies. It’s a survival story too, in a hostile environment as they try to resolve a situation no one could prepare for fully. I liked the narrative voice - normally you don’t notice third person unless it’s an omniscient narrator - it had the detail in all the right places and everything tied together with some nuance thrown in that left me thinking about the other things the plot touches on like motive and the way people are treated on Earth or Bloodroot or Lagos.

trigger warning
<spoiler> n-word, gore, trauma </spoiler>

It was meant to be a routine job, but when Campion awakes from artificial sleep, some of the passengers under her care are dead. Nobody but them is on board of the ship, and everybody has been asleep. Or have they?

This is the ultimate locked room mystery in which the locked room is a space ship. We have a limited cast of people, because there may be thousands of people on board, but most of them are trackable as still asleep in their pods.

Since she doesn't know what's going on, the captain has to take matter into her own hands and solve this before she can establish a physical outside link, because what if there is contamination or a virus going on?

I was intimidated by the sheer size of this book, but once I started - having an off day, mind you - it nearly read itself and I am amazed at having finished this in one day, if not in one sitting.
I will make sure to look up earlier books by this author and hope they're written as this one.
The arc was provided by the publisher.

Far From The Light of Heaven is a fast paced, enjoyable read - I sped through it in under 48 hours, and constantly wanted to find out what happened next.
The only down-side to this book was that the ending felt rather abrupt.
The premise was really intriguing to me, as was the world building - although technically this is a locked-room murder mystery in space, I would happily read more in a series centring on this reality. I also felt the portrayal of an alien culture without a focus on them as "other" was really refreshing.
Thanks to Orbit and Netgalley for the ARC.

Far from the Light of Heaven is an action-packed murder-mystery-cum-science fiction space voyage. It reminded me so much of the movie Sunshine, with a dab of Leviathan Wakes; it's nail-biting, intelligent and heavens damned moreish.

This book was simply ... different. And amazing for it. Different because when you read the premise of ship travelling from Earth to the Lagos System, you're trained (as an SFF reader) to think 'ah, Space Opera,' which was the expectation I had going in. But no, as Thompson himself posits, this is definitely not Space Opera, it's Locked Room Murder in Space - the most tightly locked room there is. Because how can someone commit a murder aboard a humongous spaceship like the Ragtime and not immediately be caught by its on-board Artificial General Intelligence? And the plot certainly does make you guess, lead you down the wrong path, trick you into thinking you've worked it out when you haven't; also, it manages to throw completely explainable weird tentacle creatures, a wolf, an owl, printed-weaponry, rogue robots and aliens into the mix - all the things us SF readers love but in a wildly, wildly original way. I'd never read Tade's work before, but now I'm going to read them ALL. There's some magical originality that goes on here.

On the topic of writing style, I love how natural the tone of the novel and the speech of the characters are. It's clipped where it can be, naturally flawed and incomplete in most parts. Its writing that knows how people communicate and adds no fluff to the situation.

Lamber so awesome and original. Again does depth of creativity and imagination... am imagination that says aliens would have to be hominid, human-like or of a concept we'd understand at all? Tade shows us that the answer is 'no, they don't have to be,' when he gives us the Lambers. I won't go into too much detail, but the amount of world-building around this species in such a short book, focused on Locked Room murder, it frankly amazing.

Fin and Shell have alot of depth, as do the other less major characters like Salvo, Joke and Lawrence. Well, they are main characters as well but not like Fin and Shell ... and I think the characters here play into what's mentioned in the afterword. Each one's a very clever working of the stressors in space Tade considers: physical, mental, interpersonal and habitability. I mean, the first three are certainly explored - the mental so much with Shell. The weight she feels on her shoulders, the failure and this carries through the novel. So much so that I'm so moved by the ending that I'm writing this review immediately after. Shell goes through layers of the stressors, then all at once. And then a different combination in turn. As do all the characters. But it's fascinating how you could split the plot down into those four base stressors ... and I'm not saying much and I'm babbling here but I don't want to spoil the novel, I only want to prove to you how clever Thompson is at what he does and make you read this book.

Overall, this is probably the best book set in space (not Space Opera) you'll read this year. I guarantee it'll stick with you at least.

Space travel is very cool but its also terrifying. You’re separated from an immense endless vacuum that would freeze you in seconds by just a few thin walls of metal and a pile of electronic systems with immense redundancy. For those who work in space, and I don’t mean just have ten minutes of weightlessness you’ve paid millions for then you need to have the mindset to deal with anything the universe throws at you. In Tade Thompson’s exhilarating space thriller Far From The Light of Heaven we have a supremely capable astronaut deal with multiple mysteries and doesn’t get a moment’s rest until the final page.

Ragtime is a colony ship sending 1000 colonists form Earth to a new colony as Earth starts to spread its wings. Ragtime is pretty much controlled by it’s sentient AI and the mission will take a decade but just in case a human deputy must be ready. In this case it’s the extremely driven Sarah Campion; herself living with the legacy of her father who was one of Earth’s famous space adventurers; Campion in peak condition, she knows everything about the ship but for Campion this is just a chance to get some easy space miles under her belt while she sleeps making her eligible for many more deep space missions. It is well paid drudge work but…just ten years out from Earth Campion is awakened by the AI and finds the ship missing a lot of passengers; its many many robot servants are now hostile and there has been a lot of blood spilt. Plus did I mention there appears to be a wolf on the ship only she can see? Campion manages to get sent an investigator from the nearest colony Fin who has a past he needs to atone for, an android named Salvo plus an old friend of her father who loved the action and his strange daughter. They are the only people who could stop an immense disaster in space and find out what the hell is going on.

This is a massively enjoyable rollercoaster of a science fiction thriller that will not let go of you until the end. As soon as you are told AI ships are infallible and nothing ever goes wrong you know exactly what will start happening. This is like being led up to the tunnel and knowing very shortly you’ll be plunging high speed in the dark making seriously scary turns and corkscrews. Thompson delights throwing strange images at us – bots, wolves, neatly dismembered bodies and that’s just the few opening chapters. Dear reader I promise it will all make sense, but Thompson has laden Ragtime with all manner of nasty surprises for Campion and her crew to make sense of. We learn we cannot trust anything at face value from our friendly all seeing AI to our demanding bosses in space. The thrill for readers is knowing that there is no one who can warp in and rescue the ship plus the remaining sleeping passengers unaware their lives hang in the balance makes the stakes feel so high. They’re all alone with just their own skills and intelligence to get them out of it all.

To help us get invested we have a small yet fascinating cast all alone in the night. Campion is all about the mission and saving her ship. The murders are for her an inconvenience but she is relentless, focused and prepared to put her life on the line for others. Thompson allows us to know her the best early on so that we know that while she can appear super driven this is a woman who just wants to live her dream and honour the memory of her father. It is great to see a character who is so cool in a crisis and the book constantly tests her abilities. Fin is an absolutely great intuitive crime investigator but is a dreadful astronaut so useless at many of the routine tasks byt Campion needs his ability to piece the strange facts together. The rest of the crew compliment these two extreme characters (and I won’t say more as it may spoil your enjoyment finding out how they got on the ship). This is all about adventure and watching them all face brilliant deadly set pieces that just when you think one crisis is dealt with then the story will add two more for good luck!

This book is fast paced but what really impresses me is how Thompson uses so many ideas from science fiction that casual readers will be familiar with and without excessive infodumping gives us not just a spaceship mystery but a taste of larger future world that you want to know more about and slowly it’s secrets are shared. This shorthand allows us to quickly understand the relationships with AI; sentient Artificial life, new biology, colonies that went horribly wrong and we see how easily such sciences can be misused. All of these tales are refreshing and never feel stale. We also find out humanity is still learning to deal with a strange very alien group known as Lambers who seem overly fascinated with humans and can bend space and time plus reality for reasons they are not yet willing to share. At the same time humans are always humans and the political shenanigans so no one gets the blame for the loss of a spaceship that they could get sued for are depressingly reminded that greed is always a constant in our future as well as our past. When we do find out the rationale for all this chaos it is soberly reminding us exploitation of people by the rich is something unlikely to change anytime soon even when we can travel to the stars.

Far From The Light of Heaven is a book you will do well to just go in cold on as the fun is piecing all these random elements together and find out just how well plotted the tale is (The Wolf will make sense eventually I promise). This is very much compared to Thompson’s excellent Wormwood trilogy a fantastic high-octane thriller and yet Heaven is just as inventive in its use of science fiction ideas to give the reader a fresh new universe to explore. The tale ends very much as standalone novel but I would not be averse to Thompson coming back to this universe if not this group of characters in the future. This story was a delight to read and cements Tade Thompson as one of the genre’s best writers in science fiction and is well worth your time! Strongly recommended!

Its books like this that always makes me question why I don't read sci-fi more often! A blend of two of my favourite things a locked room mystery and space travel. Alot of thought and research went in to rooting this in actual science. Made the ideas more believeable and really scary when systems failed. But if science is not your thing, not to worry, as at the heart of the story is the seemingly impossible murders. First Mate Michelle "shell" Campion wakes from deep sleep on a routine colony transport mission. Shell isnt required to do anything as the AI runs it all. However when Shell discovers dead bodies, far away from their perfectly functioning pods. Its clear something has gone wrong. With the arrival of an investigating officer who makes it very clear Shell is his primary suspect, a glitchy AI and failing systems Shell is troubleshooting on all fronts. The full cast of characters are scattered between Ragtime (ship) Space Station Lagos used by Ragtime for its final jump and the planet Bloodroot, the final destination. Everyone has their own motivations and links with Ragtime so its never clear who to trust. The world building and evolved belief systems added another layer of complexity. Every decision the crew had to make had serious consequences, with such high stakes the tension was palpable. Thompson has a reductive style of writing that worked really well here. It had all of my attention, I couldnt finish it fast enough. I was reading well into the wee hours of the morning. Highly recommend.

This is my first Tade Thompson novel. It certainly won't be my last. A murder mystery set in space. Incredibly tense, gripping, claustrophobic and unputdownable. A must read for any sci-fi fan.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

This was a brilliantly written locked room mystery set inside a spaceship piloted by an untrustworthy AI and a human woman who never expected to find herself in the middle of a murder scene. The tension of the writing was so powerful and the characters reflected that: from Campion discovering 31 hacked up bodies to Fin, the investigator sent to determine what happened. I love the individual perspectives as news about the Ragtime leaked across the universe and how everyone reacted differently. The reveal of the killer was brilliant, and although this is a stand alone, I would love to see these characters again. I'm very glad I picked this up and will definitely read it again!

Far From The Light of Heaven is a vapid science fiction murder mystery by Tade Thompson that reads like a detailed escape room trapped in a complex universe of descriptive history and interstellar life. This is the story of the colony ship Ragtime, docking in the Lagos system, which has travelled light-years to bring thousands of passengers safely in the cosmos. Some of these sleepers never wake as we discover a sinister mystery unfolding aboard this vessel and it is up to Shell Campion and the ragtag crew to determine the best course of action. This is a sci-fi novel filled with political intrigue, crafty AI and a hopeful journey.

The characters deepen the story here and Thompson has added a dimension to each character that is hardly rivalled. Shell Campion is introduced as the Second-In-Command signed with a private space organisation to serve on the colony ship. Daughter of the famous Hal Campion, she is incredibly nervous about her first mission but what can go wrong when the AI running the ship is guaranteed to take care of everything? The AI never fails and we can definitely be sure that the AI has played no part in what is occurring aboard the Ragtime.

Thompson has played the story in Far From the Light of Heaven brilliantly and it became an intriguingly nervous but ambitious space mystery. The themes of virtue, spirituality and colonialism are prevalent in this novel and are not overshadowed but the exploitation of power. The idea of personification with artificial intelligence bonding with humans and legality is in scope with current affairs. Sometimes this can draw back from novels, especially science fiction, but Thompson weaves an expert storyline that encompasses bravery in the scope of loss.

This novel is a surprisingly engaging read but these elements can easily be lost whilst reading. Thompson has a wonderful way of helping you think twice about the surface level narrative but layers this over an imaginatively deeper story that keeps us entertained in a fast-paced ride.

Thank you Little, Brown Book Group U.K. and NetGalley for the arc of Far From The Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

I love Sci Fi, I’m a sucker for a space opera and when you unite them with a locked room murder mystery, you’ve got my taste buds tingling, and Tade Thompson does not disappoint.

Shell Campion is on her first interstellar voyage as first mate; this is the interstellar equivalent of a walk in the park…the AI captain pilots and she’s the human face, but of course things don’t go to plan. A decade into the journey she is so feebly awoken and from that point on it’s like hell in a hand basket!

Despite the sudden and terse ending, the story itself is full on from start to end. Multiple fleshed out characters, with diverse and interesting back stories. Human and alien relations, AI and a Wolf make for a variegated cast and I must say I do have a soft spot for Frances and Joké.

Overall a most satisfying locked room murder mystery that engages and draws you in from start to sudden stop!

This murder-mystery-in-space starts off with a bang. The drama and tension are both good, and we have a diverse, interesting cast of characters trying to solve the riddle of who has sabotaged their spaceship AI and murdered several of the sleeping passengers. There's a lot of potential in this, but ultimately this one wasn't for me. The chapters are very short, and change POV quite a bit, which also affects the pacing, causing it to jump around a lot. Everything seems to be introduced rather abruptly, and there is a lot of deus ex machina. The crew don't even solve who the murderer is - he suddenly appears after the 50% mark with his own POV chapter, explaining everything about his motivation. Other parts, such as his 'comeuppance' are glossed over entirely and (in Shell's own words!) it felt like an itch unscratched. The ending was fairly abrupt, although it feels deliberate, as though this book is being set up as the first in a series.