The Immortality Thief

Actually it's 4,5 stars. In the middle of the book I was a bit annoyed (and bored maybe?) by the repetitive monster attacks. I lost track of them and couldn't distinguish one from another.

But other than that... Wow.
Just for the context, I do not do horror. Like at all. And I didn't see that the book was actually marked as horror until I got around chapter 4 or 5 and was already hooked. I had some doubts about moving on, but decided to give it a chance. I could DNF it at any moment, I thought. Yeah, right. Little did I know what was waiting for me. Thankfully, the horror parts didn't go beyond some shadows in the dark and a bit of gore. [note to myself, maybe not decline the book outright if there's horror in the description in the future?]

I liked the characters and their dynamics very much. The only thing that was difficult fir me to believe is how perfectly kind Sean is. He has absolutely no flaws. He's so kind that he has no idea how much his 'best friend' resents him. OK, maybe that's his one flaw - unbelievable naivety?

The last 20-25% of the book were a rollercoaster and it was great. Some things were too convenient to be plausible, but I did not care about it at all at that point. I was racing to the end. And it was a hell of an end. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book now.

For such a chonky book this was a very quick read for me. Taran Hunt has an engaging, slightly cynical voice in her writing here which I found very easy reading. There are some distinct Resident Evil/Bioshock in space vibes with the story, with creepy genetically modified humans providing monsters on a long abandoned spaceship where our protagonist finds themselves the pawn between two competing teams attempting to recover some data.

Sean Wren, the main protagonist, is in an interesting character. A mixture of idealism, helplessness and criminality with a gift for languages. He has an impressive ability to run from disaster to disaster, but an impressive ability to talk his way out of them as well. That trait leads to an intensely action packed story that gives a compulsive readability to the story.

Fun, action packed and a bit silly in places. A good read!