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Obscura

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Obscura

By: Joe Hart
Narrated by: Christina Traister
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About this listen

She’s felt it before…the fear of losing control. And it’s happening again.

In the near future, an aggressive and terrifying new form of dementia is affecting victims of all ages. The cause is unknown, and the symptoms are disturbing. Dr. Gillian Ryan is on the cutting edge of research and desperately determined to find a cure. She’s already lost her husband to the disease, and now her young daughter is slowly succumbing as well. After losing her funding, she is given the unique opportunity to expand her research. She will travel with a NASA team to a space station where the crew has been stricken with symptoms of a similar inexplicable psychosis—memory loss, trances, and violent, uncontrollable impulses.

Crippled by a secret addiction and suffering from creeping paranoia, Gillian finds her journey becoming a nightmare as unexplainable and violent events plague the mission. With her grip weakening on reality, she starts to doubt her own innocence. And she’s beginning to question so much more—like the true nature of the mission, the motivations of the crew, and every deadly new secret space has to offer.

Merging thrilling science-fiction adventure with mind-bending psychological suspense, Wall Street Journal bestselling author Joe Hart explores both the vast mysteries of outer space and the even darker unknown that lies within ourselves.

©2018 Joe Hart (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Adventure Fiction Genre Fiction Psychological Science Fiction Suspense Technothrillers Thriller & Suspense Technology Thriller Exciting Scary
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The was a fantastic Sci Fi you will love with its twists and turns. The characters are very real and the plot though disturbing at times kept me intrigued right to the very end. Scientific exploration, memory loss, Mars, teleportation, space stations, murders, bravery and gripping tension- this book has it all.

Had me on the edge of my seat

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I wasn't sure what to expect coming into this one, it promised terror in space on the blurb and it delivered it just not in the mode I expected. Set in the dire times of near future, it keeps most of it's cards close to it's chest early on. The protagonist is a woman haunted by her past and seperated from her dying child, she is in a constant state of stress as she is whisked off her feet into a situation that is continually growing in complexity and paranoia. This growing mental stress gives the story momentum and unpredictability, but I feel like she makes a few questionable decisions during the first half that come back to haunt her.

At the beginning of the second half, the relationships and dynamics between the characters are turned on their head and after the dust settles, some clear goals are in sight. A mystery that started to grow towards the end of the first half now becomes a focus point to be uncovered with some of the results quite unnerving, some moments of sheer terror shaking things up when things almost become routine.

Towards the end, this mystery becomes a runaway frieght train driving the pacing towards a horrific climatic close. Because of the focus on more how characters are reacting to each other over specific and unnatural phenomena, to me it feels more like a thriller than a horror novel with a shift towards more contemporary horror in the last quarter.

Characters were excellent, many having ambiguous motives that shift over the course of the novel and a suprisingly endearing platonic relationship between a man and a woman that really moved me. During the climax of the story, people reveal their true colours in suprising ways and I enjoyed these developments.

Since I'm not so familiar with the thriller genre as much as horror, I'm not sure where to place it but I did enjoy it for most part. It's an easy 3.5 to 4 on the story and a 3.5 on the narration, I enjoyed Christina's female charaters and some of her male ones but I got a bit mixed up with characters using more gravelly masculine tones that sounded a bit too similar.

I would recommend this book to fans of thrillers who also enjoy their sci-fi grounded in reality. Fans of horror will love the suspense, pacing and atmosphere but may not find extraordinary elements that really push the story into uncharted waters, so I would tentatively endorse it to them.

Expected horror, got sci-fi psychological thriller

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This story was unlike any I have read before but I enjoyed it. I loved Joe Harts The Final Trade series (highly recommend) so I thought I'd try something else of his.

The story is unique and one thing didnt make sense to me (maybe I missed that part when I was listening) but overall it was good. I wasnt a fan of the accents though.

Enjoyable

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If you love stephen king, you'll love Joe Hart!

I never usually read books based in space but you've converted me

it was the perfect blend of creepy and suspense

Couldn't stop listening to this one

Joe Hart is my new favourite horror author

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