On the fringes of human space, a murder will light a fuse and send two different people colliding together. She lives on Earth, where peace among the population is a given. He is on the fringe of society where authority is how much firepower you wield. She is from the powerful, the elite. He is with the military. Both want the truth – but is revealing the truth good for society?
Obsidian Detective is what we can all use right now: a bit of rollicking space adventure with interstellar-level mysteries and hard-boiled heroes trying to put all the pieces together. He’s a former space soldier trying to find the truth about the deaths of his entire squad under suspicious circumstances. She’s a stubborn, hard-pushing detective who won’t let politics or lazy partners get in the way of finding the truth. Classic film noir mystery characters!
Two years ago, a small moon in a far off system was set to be the location of the first intergalactic war between humans and an alien race. It never happened. However, something was found many are willing to kill to keep a secret. Now, they have killed the wrong people. How many will need to die to keep the truth hidden?
What’s even better is, if you’re the kind of sci-fi reader who wants to get into big series that just keeps going and going, Obsidian Detective is just the starting point for a much bigger narrative, the Opus X series. And the best thing is that you can get Obsidian Detective for free right now to see if you want to dig in and get hooked on this whole new sci-fi universe.
He will have vengeance no matter the cost. She will dig for the truth. No matter how risky the truth is to reveal.
I’ve read about the first quarter of Obsidian Detective at this point, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. It’s very much a breezy (socially-distanced) beach read of a science-fiction story. Certainly, there are a lot of classic sci-fi tropes involved, but that makes it comforting, familiar, and easy to like. But it’s fun to watch a big mystery unfold and imagine the places and technology being used.
For example, one of the biggest challenges of space travel stories is allowing faster-than-light (FTL) travel exist, but still make getting to far-flung places challenging to reach and therefore exotic. In the future of the ‘Opus X’ universe, humanity and a number of aliens races have discovered FTL (and other) technologies left by an ancient and vanished rate, and adapted it for their own use. This technology is similar to that in the Expanse stories, where there are Startgate-like portals, but they have to be located far out from a solar-system’s gravity well, so that while the trip from gate to gate is quick, the trip from a gate to the habitable planets and moons in a given system can take weeks or months using sub-light ships. It creates the useful plot device that we can live in a universe with aliens and interstellar travel, but it’s not as easy as kicking on the warp drive. The distances between places and the time it takes to traverse them allows for mysteries to exist.
Even better, this is an active and growing story universe. Beyond Obsidian Detective, there are seven other ‘Opus X’ books out following these characters on their path to truth, justice, and the intergalactic way, and three more on the way. If you’re a fan of getting sucked into a big new book series and having lots and lots of books to read ahead of you, then this may be a great choice. I’ll also point out that, while what I’ve read so far has some spacey shoot-’em-up violence, the language is very tame, suggesting this may be a series that could be reasonable for middle-age readers to get into. I would suggest parents reading first, just to make sure. Just call it research!
Obsidian Detective can be downloaded for free for most of the digital platforms available (such as Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, Scribd, and more), just by following this link and picking your favorite app. It’s a great “try before you buy,” approach – get the first novel in a series for free, and see if you want to invest the time and money in following the characters and stories to the end.
