The Cold Between (2016, USA) is the first in a four-book series, originally published between 2016 and 2025. There may be more to follow. There probably is. The series is called Central Corps, because the main characters belong to that organisation. It’s a sort of Bujold/Cherryh/Moon light space opera, of a sort that was plentiful during the 1980s and 1990s. I read a lot of it in the 1990s, and I still have fond memories of many of them.
Which makes The Cold Between feel a bit old-fashioned, although it has updated the template in some parts. One of which is an actual sex scene, which takes place in the first ten pages.
Elena Shaw is the chief of engineering aboard the Central Corps ship Galileo, which has been sent to the world of Volhynia to deliver a cargo that should have been delivered by another Central Corps ship. But that ship had been attacked by a ship of the PSI, sort of spaceship Romany who are generally on good terms with Central Corps.
On Volhynia, Shaw leaves a bar with a retired PSI captain (the aforementioned sex scene), and that ex-captain later finds the body of a murdered Galileo crew-member, who incidentally Shaw had split with only a few weeks earlier. The Volhynia authorities arrest the ex-captain, Zajec, and seem keen on pinning the murder on him, despite Shaw providing an alibi.
Back aboard Galileo, executive officer Valentis has been involved in some secret mission with Shadow Ops, with Captain Foster completely out of the loop. It’s all to do with a nearby wormhole and the mysterious loss of Central Corps ship Phoenix decades earlier, and on which Foster’s mother was serving. Shadow Ops, and some dirty dealers in Central Corps, plus a major corporation, have a secret on the other side of the wormhole. And they’re happy to start off a war with the PSI to keep it secret.
Of course, Shaw and Zajec, and Foster once he’s figured things out, manage to foil the plot, and everything ends neatly. But then these sort of sf novels are generally good on the plotting, even if never entirely convincing when it comes to the world-building. Okay yes, it’s basically the US in spaaaace, a nicer and kinder than the present-day version, it’s true, but it still continues to astonish me how US science fiction writers seem incapable of imagining any type of future human society that is not based on the US, incorporating all the things wrong with it and that other nations on Earth, of which there are nearly 200, do not have or do (and yes, I’ve been watching The Expanse; don’t get me started).
The other major element of these books is the characters, and Bonesteel has a likeable, although not particularly varied or diverse, cast list. But at least none of the good guys are sociopaths, which is unusual enough these days to be notable. Having said all that, The Cold Between feels a bit, well, meh. It’s put together well enough, but there’s nothing remarkable, no “eyeball kicks” or ideas that jump out. It’s an action-adventure set in a made-up future, and everything in it is all too recognisable. I doubt I’ll bother with the sequels.
