Title: Providence
Author: Max Barry
Publication Date: April 2020
It was built to kill our enemies. But now it's got its own plans.
In the future, the war against aliens from the dark reaches of space has taken a critical turn. Once we approached the salamanders in peace... and they annihilated us. Now mankind has developed the ultimate killing machine, the Providence class of spaceship.
With the ships' frightening speed, frightening intelligence and frightening weaponry, it's now the salamander's turn to be annihilated... in their millions.
The mismatched quartet of Talia, Gilly, Jolene and Anders are the crew on one of these destroyers. But with the ship's computers designed to outperform human decision-making in practically all areas, they are virtual prisoners of the ship's AI. IT will take them to where the enemy are, it will dictate the strategy in any battle, it will direct the guns....
The crew's only role is to publicize their glorious war to a skeptical Earth. Social media and video clips are THEIR weapons in an endless charm offensive. THEIR chief enemies are not the space reptiles but each other, and boredom.
But then everything changes. A message comes from base: the Providence is going into the VZ, the Violet Zone, where there are no beacons and no communications with Earth. It is the heart of the enemy empire - and now the crew are left to wonder whether this is a mission of ultimate destruction or, more sinisterly, of ultimate self-destruction...
My very first book from the author. And I must say I did enjoyed reading this. It is about a space adventure story set in the near future. It has quite a unique story line I really couldn't guess how it was going to end until the last page and I'm sure some readers will enjoy it. What I just do not particularly like about this book are the character development. The crew members which happened to be also the main characters, lacks the competence and intelligence I was hoping for a crew who will be sent out to gather intelligence from outer space enemies.
I am certainly going to check out more books from this author.
Thank you to @times.reads for providing me a complimentary copy of this book.
