DARK RUN by Mike Brooks

The Keiko is a ship of smugglers, soldiers of fortune, and con artists, traveling Earth's colony planets searching for the next job, and nobody aboard talks about their past- until now. Captain Ichabod Drift is being blackmailed: the Keiko has to deliver a mysterious load of cargo to Old Earth at a specific time and place, unseen. It's what they call a dark run, and all too accurately, as when the delivery goes south, it may be their last.

Enter a corrupt galaxy where criminals like the crew on the Keiko are often the best people in it, especially when they; re motivated by revenge.

 Hello again everyone! It's been quite some time since I've written a book review, as since stopping this here blog I went to put most of my efforts into my YouTube channel. As of the past few years, I've been debating on continuing with my YouTube channel and rediverting my efforts back to this blog, and as such, HERE I AM!

So to welcome myself back, I'm starting off with talking about Dark Run by Mike Brooks, a tension and drama fueled space pirate adventure where everyone has a story to tell. I wanted to pick this book up for quite some time, as I always love any sort of story that has the words "space pirate" in the mix, and it's the type of story I, myself, have been trying to write for the past few years. NaNoWriMo was this past month and I did participate, and I did win (which was exciting) and I tried to work on this story but I find before I attempt to continue with further drafts, I should continue to explore the genre I am trying to dive into.

So enter Mike Brooks and his tale of space pirates who end up on the wrong side of an already pretty sketch bargain, The story follows that Captain Drift gets blackmailed by an old employer named Nicolas Kelsier to do "one last job", claiming that he would expose his crew to his nefarious history should he refuse. As much as Drift would rather not have that made public, he was willing to take his chances fighting his way out of the situation, but not so long before The Laughing Man appears at Kelsiers side, a hired assassin who was thought to be a myth. Knowing he would have no chance of surviving if he tried, he takes the job with the confidence that Kelsier had never given him a bad job from their time working together years ago.

And then the shit...hits...the....fan.

Ends up they weren't supposed to survive the dark run, and once Drift and his crew realize this, they are out to hunt Kelsier down and make him pay.

I thought that this was a great story with a great band of characters, all who are diverse both in personality but as well as culturally. As the reading community has been vying for more diverse characters and stories, I was pretty happy to find that this crew had so much to show for it without it being too obvious in its goal for representation. Drift as Captain and the main protagonist, is all about being suave and humorous, who knows how to talk his way out of situations and get things done. He is also the main comedic relief in most sticky situations which makes him likable and enjoyable to read. 

I love the expanse of the space network that Brooks has developed in this novel, which honestly surprised me as I had thought up of things pretty similar to how he described in this book! Although it does make me second guess including them, it definitely tells me I had a good idea to start with so who knows what I'll do down the line! Brooks includes tons of information about how Earth and it's many nations expanded into space and how the governments came to colonize areas and form territories. He does this all during the storytelling where it makes sense to add and helps with the moment or scenario at hand, which helped to prevent the story from becoming too wordy or informative at times.

I also really enjoyed Brooks writing style, as he includes so much in each sentence. It's as the saying goes,  less is more. I've seen many quotes reiterating that same idea, that what you can say in ten sentences should be shortened to one and to not linger on. Brooks does this very well, and it made me realize how bad I am at doing exactly that with my own writing *sigh*. But he has a very nice flow of his writing that made reading easy and allowed me to really be a part of what was happening. I will say though, that later down the line I did skim a pretty decent amount because all I wanted to know was what was going to happen! But, even with that, I don't feel like I missed out on anything too important.

Overall I really enjoyed this book! Although I didn't throw it down once it was done all the while screaming "OMG", I still want to know what's going on with the rest of the story as it does continue into at least two more novels. There is still so much to learn about each of the characters which I'm sure plays into the future books, as we all well know, anyone with a past could have it come back to haunt them.

PERSONAL RATING: 4/5