One Way

By: S. J. Morden

Narrated by: William Hope

Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

A murder mystery set on the frozen red wastes of Mars.

Eight astronauts. One killer. No way home.

We stand at the dawn of a new era.

Frank Kitteridge is serving life for murdering his son's drug dealer. So when he's offered a deal by Xenosystems Operations - the company that runs the prison - he takes it, even though it means swapping one life sentence for another.

There has never been a better time to be alive.

He's been selected to help build the first permanent base on Mars. Unfortunately, his crewmates are just as guilty of their crimes as he is - and he'll have to learn to trust them if they're to succeed.

The future of space travel is in safe hands.

As the convicts set to work on the frozen wastes of Mars, the accidents multiply. Until Frank begins to suspect they might not be accidents at all....

Xenosytems Operations: making dreams a reality.

There's a murderer amongst them, and everyone's a suspect.

©2018 S.J. Morden (P)2018 Orion Publishing Group Limited

Hope seems to have no hope left

An interesting story but William Hope's voice was just painfully monotonous at times. It was really tough to plough through the narrative when just the protagonist is in play. There is some inflection and accents when doing the different characters, which is nice, but it took me weeks to finish this because his voice was just so boring. The story itself is quite compelling, and it's got the hard sci-fi elements one is looking for, but not sure it makes up for it.

Hard scifi and a very charismatic main character

Private company XO is hired by NASA to build a base on Mars, but XO is keen in lowering costs and cutting corners, and instead of sending an astronaut and several robots to do the job, they decide to send seven convicts with an overseer. These seven convicts have skills that will be useful for building the base, and they are promised freedom on another planet, but they are never told the price they should pay for it.

This was one of the most compelling books I have listened to in the last months. I have a sweet spot for hard science-fiction, I think it is my favorite genre ever, but if the story includes interesting characters, then I will become obsessed with a book, as it happened with this one.

The story starts slowly, but I think the build up is important to get to know Frank and his vision of the world. I was able to feel the anguish and the struggle during Frank’s training, and that put me in the right place when the convicts were sent to Mars, I already knew them and cared for them. Things begin to go south quite soon, and although I had my suspicions on the right place already half-way, this was an exciting and intense read. We witness the events from Frank’s perspective, and although the rest of the characters are not as developed as him, Frank is incredibly well written, with flaws, merits, and an interesting back story.

William Hope did a fantastic job bringing the characters to life, giving each one a unique voice and style, which made following dialogs a breeze. But the real merit was truly becoming Frank, transmitting the character’s complex emotions, and make me feel that he was alive.

This was a book that I could not put down, and which I became obsessed with. The first thing I did after listening to it was going for the sequel.