An unidentified object appears next to the International Space Station. The astronauts and cosmonauts on board are first fascinated, soon confused, and soon after stark raving mad.

Mission control is trying to make sense of it.

The beginning of the book is gripping and the free sample got me to buy the rest. But unfortunately, as the story progresses, it feels like the author loses more and more interest in the story and the plot fizzles into gibberish.

While this sounds like a science fiction story, it actually plays in today’s world and environment, all the way to the fact that the only access for humans to the space station is via the Russian Soyuz ship. The problem is that the story just makes no sense after a while.

Warning: Spoilers after this marker.

A government conspiracy is centered around an American major general who takes control of the Russian space program (somehow) and nobody seems to object. This American general also seems to be acting on his own, he goes rogue, kills people, reassigns space missions at will, without any assistance from anyone.

There is so much goofy stuff happening in this story that it’s completely implausible and therefore unreal. The alien artifact is neither explained nor does it seem to have any function other than causing psychological trauma in all humans that get near it. In the end, it conveniently disappears. I read the whole book to find out what it was and why it was there. I could have stopped reading half way through and not missed anything.

It was an unsatisfying story all the way around.

The half-star is for a good idea.