Basilisk - Scott Bradley
I received a free review copy of this book from NetGalley.
Basilisk came across my NetGalley dashboard and I was intrigued enough by the concept to request it. I was hoping for some high-octane military SF with weird monsters and a strange conspiracy. And that's technically what I got, but unfortunately it was a failure to launch that I ultimately didn't finish reading.
Here's the blurb:
More than anything, Skylar wants to become the captain of a starship in the Karian Maines, like her father, but her father is fearless and a natural-born leader. Skylar is afraid of everyone and has failing grades.
When war breaks out, she quits school and joins the Marines to serve on the starship Cyclone. She learns there are creatures in the solar system called basilisks that can wipe out the entire population of a planet. Her initial reaction is disbelief. The notion seems preposterous, and she dismisses it without a second thought.
Then, her squad is sent in to investigate an abandoned enemy destroyer. They leave four marines behind to guard the shuttle and search the ship. They’re not gone long when they’re called back to the shuttle. Their shuttle is stolen, her sergeant is killed in a skirmish, and she has to take command. She finds bite marks on the legs of two marines that were guarding the shuttle. The bitten marines fall into a deep sleep and wake up hours later, describing a lizard-like creature with extraordinary speed and agility.
When they encounter another lizard-like creature, the bitten marines protect it, consumed by a desperate need to be bitten again.
As more members of her squad are bitten, Skylar must find a way to overcome her fears, deal with the bitten marines, and do the impossible—kill the creatures.
The issues with Basilisk don't take their time to materialise. The prose is desperately in need of a second set of eyes on it. This reads like unedited first draft, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this is the first novel the author has written (not to be confused with the first novel published, which for most authors is the result of multiple failed manuscripts as they learn their craft). Take the action scene that the book starts with, which reads as little more than a list of events taking place:
The first squad went down the passageway towards the hatch. Two marines had their guns pointed, and the other two had grenades. When they got to the hatch, a marine with a grenade managed to throw it inside before a blinding storm of blue streaks cut his arm off. Another marine with a grenade overexposed his body and got hit several times. The grenade fell beside him. Another marine saw the loose grenade, dropped his gun, and scrambled to reach it. He grabbed it and threw it just before being battered with streaks of blue.
The first grenade exploded, and then the other.
It's not compelling or thrilling in any way. This wants to be Starship Troopers-esque action, but it's entirely lacking.
Speaking of Starship Troopers, there was a moment early on when I wondered whether this is attempting to satirise military fetishism and right wing nationalism in the same way as the Starship Troppers movie. Unfortunately it seems like Basilisk may have more in common with Heinlein's novel. Our main character delivers several lectures about how important it is for a nation to have overwhelming military might in order to defend the freedom of its people, and how it was her patriotic duty to drop out of school and join the military to fight in a war she doesn't understand. As I read more of these diatribes it became clear that this viewpoint is not satirical but is in fact very sincere. Perhaps if I'd managed to finish the book I would have found this view challenged later in the narrative. Alas, I didn't, so I'll never know.
Part of my reason for not finishing is to do with this thread of conservatism that runs throughout every facet of the book. Take Skylar's characterisation. There's an attempt to deliver a romance sub-plot, but the only way I can describe it is as being deeply weird. In an early chapter we learn that Skylar has a crush on a man she's never met. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. but the weirdness comes as she explores this crush.
Skylar spent much of her time wishing the man of her dreams would swoop her up into his arms and carry her away, or if that was too much to ask, at least notice she was alive. Men surrounded her, but she only had eyes for one. He was a corporal like her, slightly junior, but she was senior to all the corporals. Well, maybe not all, not Jackson, but most of them. Her man stood half a head taller than her, had a clean crew cut— like almost every other man on the ship— and familiar icy-blue eyes that captured every nerve in her body. His muscles were firm like a gladiator, but he was a true gentleman. She wasn’t sure about the last attribute because she’d never spoken to him. She couldn’t. Every time she got anywhere near him, she started to shake, and she knew if he ever talked to her, she’d melt and make a complete fool of herself, so she kept her distance.
While she's crushing on this nameless man, her friend Trudi is described as a "slut". We aren't told why this is, but we're also told that Skylar feels it would be a "mistake to trust her with her secret. No one could ever know. No one". Her secret, of course, is that she has a crush on someone. Later we're treated to a scene of a cartoon villain drug dealer attempting to "[set Skylar up] to be an addict". It's a weirdly juvenile view of drugs and drug users that made me laugh aloud when I read it, though it's clearly not meant to be funny and is instead deeply sincere.
Ultimately it was the constant thread of weird misogyny and the real "men write women" edge to the narrative combined with the 'action' sequences that get bogged down in listing the minutiae of every action taking place that made me give up.
In more capable hands I think this could have been interesting. The idea of massive mythological creatures existing in deep space is compelling, but the attempts to build some sense of mystery around them are ham-handed at best. The narrative itself is unfocused, punctuated by weird scenes that don't serve any purpose - a date with the mysterious man Skylar has a crush on who think she's her "slut" best friend, the scene with a drug dealer attempting to get her hooked on a free first hit - and jumping between point of view characters in a way that feels random rather than structured or intentional.
When it comes down to it, this just wasn't interesting or compelling enough for me to overlook its flaws.