Review – Offworld

As someone who respects Parrish’s work and yet wasn’t entirely thrilled with his superhero trilogy, I hoped against hope that Offworld would sweep me out of my reading chair into a science fictional whirlwind. Thank God my hope was not misplaced. For me, this was light years better than the trilogy-just as apocalyptic if not as epic.

When astronauts Christopher Burke and his team Terry, Owen, and Trisha return from a long mission to Mars, they discover the welcome wagon has left the building. Or the planet. In their quest to find signs of life and a reason behind NASA’s and evidently the whole world’s disappearances, they meet a young lady named Mae, presumably the only person alive besides them. Hers is a strange story and they’re not sure whether to trust her or not.

Finally connecting their seemingly hopeless situation to an anomaly on Mars, they get closer to the truth and cataclysmic danger. They’ll have to outwit the culprits (and to find out who they would be you’ll have to read it) if they want to come out alive, and it’s not going to be easy. Almost literal hell and high water rain down on them in their quest to again bring some sense of normalcy to the world.

Other authors have done the oh-my-gosh-everyone-on-earth-has-vanished plot routine. Parrish’s take on this, however, is all but routine. I loved the explanation behind the removal of earth’s populace-very high tech and cool. And excellent character development makes the reader stay engaged throughout the story. I definitely liked Offworld the best of anything Parrish has written and hope to see more stories like this in the future.