I really like Palumbo’s style anyway, but here he does a great job of creating dark, moody images that made me feel almost claustrophobic. Which is a shame because I feel that it was written very much with an eye to the visual, something Palumbo is able to take full advantage of in his gorgeous full-page illustrations. Then I found out that it had already been made into a TV series for the SyFy channel, and the general consensus on the interweb was that it wasn’t very good.

It’s definitely something that would translate to the screen well (all that blood!), or so I thought while I was reading it. That just made watching them die one by one more fun than scary, however. For a future in which the “Academy of Human Knowledge” appears to be the highest power, this motley group aren’t very Star Trek and they fall prey to suspicion and paranoia in record time, (because humanity will always be its own worst enemy, I guess). Of the ten characters in this story, only one is anywhere near pleasant, but they are all interesting. Martin certainly has a talent for writing compelling, if not necessarily likeable, characters though, and he puts it to good use here. A couple of the deaths are pretty spectacular, but I suspect that may be all I take away from this book. I’d have paid good money to read more of the secondary story about the mythical volcryn, but the plot mostly concerns itself with the extermination of the small academic crew aboard the Nightflyer and the mysterious Royd Eris. This is a horror story in space (did you guess?).

The powerful telepath d’Branin has employed is convinced that the crew are in danger from the get-go and only becomes more distressed as the journey continues …

For this purpose d’Branin has chartered a Nightflyer and her captain Royd Eris, an eccentric individual who will only interact with the group via his hologrammatic self. Ugh, life gets in the way sometimes, you know?Ī group of scientists have been drawn together by Karoly d’Branin, a man obsessed with the as yet unseen alien volcryn, who is determined to intercept this mythical race out in deep space and study them. And, yeah, it’s a short, quick scifi read and my month is going to hell in a handcart so I’ve had to restack a couple of bigger tomes I intended to read. I wouldn’t have picked it up but for the fact that this new edition is illustrated by David Palumbo (the man responsible for those gorgeous painterly Binti novella covers *all the hearts*) and I really love his stuff. Originally published back in 1980, Nightflyers is a novella-length story that was recently repackaged and turned up on the shelves at work. Banner by imyril of There’s Always Room for One More image by Sebastien Decoret from

The nightflyers book