The Crypt: Shakedown

The Keeling is a top secret spaceship with some kind of alien backstory. Because it goes into the most dangerous battle situations and has massive crew losses, the crew is mostly made up of criminals serving a two year term in place of their original sentence. And somehow some of them survive their mission.

Shakedown is #1 of a series of not yet published books. The first half is the setup with the many characters being introduced and their histories revealed. The second half is their first mission as they settle in to the strange spaceship and their new crewmates. The characters are either ship crew or Raiders, the on-site marines who do the close up fighting. Of course they hate each other, but then most of the individuals hate everybody else anyway.

It's a fast paced story once it gets going and has lots of violence between crew members until they are forced to act together in battle situations. The long introduction component takes concentration to get through as the backstory of certain characters influences their later actions. And with so many characters things can get lost in the narrative. It also suffers somewhat from the descriptive passages of some parts of the spaceship. We don't really need to know the dimensions of the galley area and how seats are only on one side of the table etc. Same with other areas of the ship. We are already familiar with the general layout of a control deck or navigation table.

The book ends the shakedown mission well enough, and also launches us into a major event that signals that the sequel will start on a big moment.