Review copy provided by the author in exchange for an honest review
Cathy’s life is a mess since her the death of her sister Angela. On top of her sisters death she believes her brother-in-law Michael has died in a horrible accident. Michael was one of thirty Outermen sent to explore the void just beyond the Shell. These thirty men are sent to explore the void of space in the capsule program. With all of humanity watching the launch and seeing an explosion the Outermen are all thought to have died. But not all of them, one did survive and return to Earth. Barely alive and a mess of a man, Michael is alive by some miracle. Cathy has been picked up by the GATE company, the company behind the capsule program and owners of the threshold station. Dr. Cormac, the man in charge of the program, thinks Michael will tell her what happened on the capsule. Dr. Cormac needs to know why the capsule exploded and why the mission fell apart.
The way BP Gregory shows us Cathy’s view of society in Outermen is interesting and a bit frightening. A future where expressing your thoughts is enough to put you in the hot seat. Where you can be locked away and kept as a subject of observation by The Screws. The Screws are all too interested to find out about your feelings and learn what you think and why. Cathy is a sarcastic and kinda of dark character but this is what I really liked about her. She thinks there is always someone out to get her or that someone has an ulterior motive. With The Screws one one side and Dr. Cormac on the other she isn’t wrong. BP Gregory also gave her a really good sense of humor that plays well.
As Michael tells Cathy what happened on the capsule the tension is so strong you can feel it pressing down on you. An invisible force not seen but felt. BP Gregory’s story telling is enough to give you anxiety about the whole mess. She describes the complete blackness and emptiness of what is Out there with perfect clarity. Never before did the absence of light feel so oppressive. After Cathy learns about the crews time in the capsule and it’s clear, no matter the cause, even if you know who, what, where and why you can’t go back and fix anything. BP Gregory writes complex characters and keeps you on your toes wondering whats around the next corner. The story is heavy and deep, it makes you take a step back and think and wonder.
Rating 4/5
Book Info
Length: 330 Pages
Release date: November 14, 2014
To Purchase Outermen Click Here
The sky has no stars. Fear what’s out there …
An oppressed world locked inside a shell. Now the void beyond has spat back Michael Formir, splintered in mind and body. Hardly a soul recalls him, and the bride he so desperately struggled home to wed is long dead.
Repulsed as she is it will fall to Cathy, who would have been his sister-in-law, to extract from his blasted mind the horrifying secret to Outside.
BP Gregory, biography
Horror! Sci-Fi! All manner of strange happenings! Australian author and avid reader, BP Gregory was always an oddment to justify the most terrible things. With such tales you shouldn’t always feel comfortable or safe.
Coming from a sober, orderly corporate background she has been a student of archaeology, and a dilettante of psychology, biological science, and prepping culture.
It was a love of writing about people whatever their station that drew her strongly to horror, science fiction and urban fantasy; all engines for frogmarching her hapless characters through extreme situations. A process of painfully peeling back the layers to discover what, if anything, lurks inside. Do we each treasure some inviolate core of self, kept safe from our actions and choices? Would it matter if nobody ever saw it?
BP Gregory is the author
The Scary Reviews 