It took me longer than it should have to get around to this book. Honestly, I was afraid of being disappointed. Chris is one of the smartest, wittiest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and some of the chatter around this book had me concerned that it wasn’t going to measure up to the man himself. I was wrong.
Sure, I have some nits to pick, but overall, this is a great book and a cool concept. It takes place during the Apollo era – 1973 to be exact – and is full of outstanding details about the program, the politics, and the spacecraft itself. Hadfield does a wonderful job of introducing all of this without tedious info dumps and dry, jargon-laden dissertations.
He’s got a pilot’s view of flying and life. My favorite quote from the book was: All flying machines were essentially the same; you just had to figure out how to get them started and how they wanted to kill you.
I couldn’t agree more.
The basic premise of The Apollo Murders is that the Moon holds a secret that reinvigorates the space race and ends up with Russians and Americans on the Moon at the same time. Does this sound a bit like the Apple TV series, For All Mankind? Yes, it does, but the similarities end there. Hadfield’s story contains more credibility and leaves you wondering just what might have been.
On the Feral Scale, it’s a 9 for the story and a 10 for the science (I, for one, am not going to argue with an astronaut about space-related issues). I’m looking forward to starting his follow-on novel, The Defector.
Spoilers and nits:
I spent my formative years flying the McDonnel Douglas F-4 Phantom II. It had a lot of nicknames: Phantom, Rhino, Double Ugly, and Bent Wing Bug Sucker. So, when Hadfield said that pilots called it “The Double Ugly,” it rankled me a bit. Probably just an error inserted by an editor who didn’t know any better. He wouldn’t be the first author that happened to.
There’s also a scene in which astronauts are outside the spacecraft while in Earth orbit. The booster fires to send them on the way to the Moon while there are people outside. Someone manages to hang on to an open hatch with one hand. That pushed me out of the story as I could no longer suspend my disbelief. It just doesn’t seem physically possible to hang on with only one hand, particularly when that hand is wearing a cumbersome EV glove.
These are both very minor, but I noticed them. Still going to buy and read The Defector without reservation. You should too.