Diving into the Wreck

Diving Series, Book 1

By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck

Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars. Sometimes she salvages for money, but mostly she's an active historian. She wants to know about the past - to experience it firsthand. Once she's dived the ship, she'll either leave it for others to find or file a claim so that she can bring tourists to dive it as well. It's a good life for a tough loner, with more interest in artifacts than people.

Then one day, Boss finds the claim of a lifetime: an enormous spacecraft, incredibly old, and apparently Earth-made. It's impossible for something so old, built in the days before Faster Than Light travel, to have journeyed this far from Earth. It shouldn't be here. It can't be here. And yet, it is. Boss's curiosity is up, and she's determined to investigate. She hires a group of divers to explore the wreck with her, the best team she can assemble. But some secrets are best kept hidden, and the past won't give up its treasures without exacting a price in blood. What Boss finds could rewrite history, cost lives, and start an intergalactic war.

©2009 Kristine Kathryn Rusch (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Rusch delivers a page-turning space adventure while contemplating the ethics of scientists and governments working together on future tech." (Publisher's Weekly)
"This is classic sci-fi, a well-told tale of dangerous exploration....Compellingly human and technically absorbing, the suspense builds to fevered intensity, culminating in an explosive yet plausible conclusion." (Romantic Times)

"Jennifer Van Dyck has a bright and lively voice, and she narrates at a quick pace. The story is a good old-fashioned space opera, but Van Dyck gives it some weight, turning it into a thoughtful look at history and what it can mean to individuals." (AudioFile)

Disappointing

I'm a huge fan of Rusch's Retrieval Artist series so I went into this with high expectations. Unfortunately, although the reader was great, the material was not and I was not very impressed.

The protagonist is a very unsympathetic character; this is not necessarily a fatal flaw in a book but when it's being told in the first person it doesn't help. I also found myself unable to see the internal logic in many of her decisions (despite the first person narration) and quite often I just wanted to slap her upside the head and tell her to grow up. Particularly when her bad strategic decisions got others killed. There were a number of technological issues that jarred, such as space suits that only had enough air for an hour and were fragile enough that brushing against a sharp edge was fatal. Apparently self-sealing isn't around 5000 years from now even though we routinely use it in car tyres. I also found the complete reversal of attitude of the protagonist at the end of the novel completely unbelievable in light of her actions and attitudes to that point.

I'm going to stick with the Retrieval series.

A Wreck Altogether

I am a very big fan of K.K. Rusch's scifi detective series The Retrieval Artist, so I looked forward to her new work. Sadly, I must report that Diving into the Wreck was an unhappy start to a new series.

Other reviewers say they were able to overlook the first-person narrative style. I could not. First, the style made it almost impossible to create a rich, fictional world. This was very unsatisfying, especially for speculative fiction.

Second, the main character is uninteresting. She's confused about things that don't seem to be confusing. She is supposed to be a smart person but she's blocked and shut down (yes, I know that's part of the story but it didn't work for me). She is angry about things but unaware.

I found that I just couldn't care about her. Another big problem.

Now, the book offers many details about diving into space ships, which I gather are taken from experience from real-world dives. It just wasn't enough to hold me for a novel.

Pretty blah; won't go on with series

I had trouble liking the main character. I'm not sure if it was the narrator or the writing. In spite of first person narrative, I didn't see much of Boss'' deep feelings. The plot tells us she cares for the welfare of the world to prevent the bad government to get this technology, but I don't get that feeling. She was a loner, interested in no one but herself, and shuts herself away from her emotions and people. It's tough to empathize with her.

Part of that may be the narrator. Although other listeners say different, I found the narrator has a flat, dead-pan tone. The whole book seemed like a dry, recitation of facts. Even in the most dangerous, life-threatening parts, you wouldn't know it by the tone of her voice. Listen to a sample and decide for yourself if you can handle it for an entire book.

It is a bit like Firefly. I didn't read the rest of the series, figuring it would be Firefly with stealth tech as the plot. The descriptions of the rest of the books suggest I may be wrong, but I still am not encouraged to go on with the series.

Could have been much better

What disappointed you about Diving into the Wreck?

The writing style (first person) was monotonous at best. "I did this, and then I did that. When I was done I was tired so I did this again." The parallels between ocean wreck diving and the same thing in space was extremely forced. The rationale for the parallels were not logical and had huge technical and scientific holes in them.I have seldom started a book that I was unable to finish. This was one of the exceptions.

What could Kristine Kathryn Rusch have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Let someone with a science or engineering background review the draft so that they might have pointed out all of the inconsistencies and logical flaws. Once corrected the story would have been more palatable.

What does Jennifer Van Dyck bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narration was decent but the narrator had little to work with.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Diving into the Wreck?

This book would have been much improved if not written from the first person point of view.

Drags on and on about nothing.

Probably the most boring dribble I have ever listened to. I have 2 more hours to listen to, And it’s all I can do to hang in there to finish. Ugh!

Narrator was okay. But she had a lot of what sounded like shortness of breath, dry mouth and swallowing sounds.

Really poor quality overall

Stilted repetitive poorly read; had trouble listening: predictable

Often taken out of the story by lamely repeated explanations of what or why a character did some behavior

Simply.., a No

Disjointed and weird

Disappointed with supposed tech levels described for diving in space. I am an experienced wreck diver with a PADI Divemaster rating and the description for diving a wreck jibs with scuba tech of the 1970's

How do YOU feel about first person, present tense?

Between the narrator's stilted reading and the first-person, present-tense writing style, I'm afraid I just couldn't finish this audiobook.

I love this author, and if first-person, present-tense doesn't bother you, the general story was intriguing - as far as I was able to listen to it. Who knows, maybe if I was reading this in print, or if it were a different narrator, I could have finished.

I was very disappointed.

She's a BADASS... but not really.

The first chapters make boss seem like a real tough chick. Cool! This is going to be be fun.

Then it crumbles. She's over-cautious, over-sensitive, and over-conservative.

Whatever. Look, either let her be a spit blood pirate chick, or an housewife with a spaceship. But PLEASE don't try to mix the two.

Not a bad book, but too many gaping plot holes.

DITW is an ok book, but has gaping holes in its plot that make the book irritating. This book is clearly a character driven story and the technology and science takes a back seat. With that Rusch spends a lot of time discussing how dangerous diving is, and some technological aspects are extremely important to the story, but they make no sense. I cannot get into specifics without giving a spoiler, but I found it frustrating that relatively simple tech issues could not be solved in a book taking place in a universe that has artificial gravity and FTL transportation. The danger and situations that drive the main character through out the book should not have happened in a universe as technologically advanced as this one.

These tech inconsistencies arose through out the book and were an irritant and actually distracting. I kept saying - "Why is this a problem?" "You should have a logical technological way around these issues." Yet the problems remained. I recognize that not all writers want to perform a "tech dump" in a book and those kinds of passages/scenes can make a book cold and boring, especially in a character driven book such as this. But this book felt like it needed some explanations. At least some of the tech issues needed to be rounded out and explained.

I did sort of like the main character Boss, though I found her a little irritating. She's described as as strong and quite capable character but she seemed much less capable than I thought. She constantly whined about how she was not as good a diver as others, though she was allegedly so talented and successful. While this might have just been her self doubt, it did not feel that way.

I also found that the conclusion of the book lacked logic. It seemed to be planned and organized by someone totally unaware of the reality of how military missions are planned and executed. The outcome was highly predictable and uninspiring. No twists and turns. I was actually anticipating some twist, and then the story just ended with everything falling into place. It did not seem difficult for the characters at all. THe ending was anticlimactic.

I indicated that the book was character driven, but the characters were often poorly developed with few nuances. Boss was well developed, but the descriptions did not fit with her actual behavior. Other characters were seen only in her rather limited eyes and lacked depth.

The performance by Jennifer Van Dyck was pleasant, but she was limited by the text and could not have done much more than she did.