Dark Matter Empire by Alex Zadeh is a sci-if space opera-esque novel that starts with an alien abduction and ends with the fate of our world in the balance. The novel follows Ryan Stathis, an aeronautical engineer who is one night abducted by an alien spacecraft and transported through a wormhole to somewhere in the middle of our galaxy. Ryan soon finds himself imprisoned, hunted, and in the midst of a war he, nor any human for that matter, never knew existed.

There are few positives to take from this story. The whole premise is quite interesting in and of itself, and made for a good story. Once I got down to reading it was hard to put down.

That being said I did find several issues with the story. Interesting premise aside, there seems to be a certain lack of continuity. There are times certain scenes are described, and then later the protagonist is mentioned having done something completely different. Did this happen ‘off camera’ as they say? There are also several instances where it felt like the author strayed away from the whole idea of aliens. While they do go into detail, in the beginning, explaining and detailing how each new species differs from the human race, towards the mid-point of the book we see these alien species performing very human customs. I felt it was a bit of a let down that in spite of the buildup eventually, all aliens are still the same.

I found it difficult to rate this book even 3/5. There are just two many issues that I found hard to ignore while reading this book and while the cons seem to outweigh the pros, a 1/5 rating isn’t fair since it was an easy read and had me captivated if anything to find out what’s going to happen in the end.

Rating: 2/5

Links:

• goodreads: Dark Matter Empire – Alex Zadeh

P.S. I went on a bit of a rant while reading this book on my weekly newsletter. Those interested can find it here.