Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date. But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard. Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?

YOU GUYS! YOU GUYS YOU GUYS OMG. I picked this up, seriously, babbling to my husband about how this looked like it was going to be exactly what I wanted as far as a Mass Effect-ey style space opera. I mean, it had everything -- monstrous, spider-like robots that EAT PLANETS and a plucky captain who fights them. Right? Right? NOPE. This turned into one of the creepier horror novels I’ve ever read. This was totally Event Horizon. Or Sunshine -- the movie, not the McKinley novel. IT WAS SO GOOD. I can kind of see why it has such a low rating on Goodreads just because I had no idea it was a horror novel, but dude! WIN. ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2014-04.html#burning-dark ( )

Great idea for a story but the writing just didn’t carry it across. Occasional good, well written sections with mostly lacklustre prose. ( )

Wonderfully written book that delves into a scifi meditation on the nature of responsibility in war but suffers from a lack of strong editing and plotting. With style and atmosphere to spare, the book is paced well but the conclusion comes on in a rush that seems over edited. It seems repetitious in places that distract rather than build atmosphere. I will read the next in the series but I hope that the pacing is more consistent. ( )

Think The Ring/Ringu combined with that original Star Trek episode in which the crew lands on that planet with the gaseous, super powerful entity that only wants to play games because it is emotionally just a child. That's about it. Consistently derivative and often predictable, The Burning Dark is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, yes, not all that good but still highly entertaining. There's even a reference to one of my favorite Texas rock bands. ( )