One Way by S.J. Morden
Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)
Frank Kittridge is serving a life term in prison for murdering his son’s drug dealer. One day he gets a visitor with an interesting proposal. Agree to build the first human habitat on Mars, and although you’ll still be a prisoner, you’ll be out of this cell. You get to do something for all mankind. Frank thinks about it for a short minute and agrees.
Sent to a desert training facility, he and seven other convicts are given a six-month training course in how to build the Mars base. Each of the seven has a specialty and is supposed to have one backup person, although Frank sees very quickly that all of them will be needed to do the actual construction work. Brack, the boss, is verbally abusive, the training is exhausting, and the other convicts are, unsurprisingly, not particularly agreeable people. But they persevere, and at the end of the training they’re frozen and sent to Mars.
The disasters start instantly. The supplies, which have been sent ahead over a period of years, have not landed where they are supposed to. So not only is the shelter a long ways off, but there’s very little food or water. Marcy, the transport specialist, and Frank her backup are defrosted first and sent out to recover the supplies. But wait, it gets worse…
Accidents are bound to happen in the hostile Mars environment. Are they really accidents though? What does Brack do all day, he’s certainly not helping the crew. As their numbers dwindle, Frank has to get to the answers if he wants to live.
Shady corporations forcing desperate men to take on almost suicidal missions is not exactly a new theme. Morden does a good job providing excerpts at the beginning of chapters to explain how the corporation came up with their proposal, but I just couldn’t believe in it. Morden’s future isn’t far enough away for me to believe in such a shift. Nonetheless, he builds it up logically, and if you ignore all the real-life roadblocks it kind of makes sense.
I found Frank to be pretty dense. Their tablets have oodles of capability, but he never explores it, and is surprised every time someone else tells him about a capability. He doesn’t question the unbelievable promise Brack makes him before the trip begins. There’s not much to say about the other characters, they only get time as they interact with Frank. We’re limited to just a few flashes of character development plus learning what crimes they committed to get there. You’ll notice that Frank’s crime makes him more sympathetic than the others.
This book won’t provide any surprises for the reader, but it’s a decent adventure with good pacing, a good sense of place and enough technical details to feel real-ish. It also doesn’t end Frank’s story, which continues in the sequel NO WAY. I haven’t decided if I’m curious enough to go there or not.
