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HELLGATE #2: Deep Sky
 Continuing the massive saga which began with HELLGATE: The Rabelais Alliance Six centuries in the future, Mankind faces our darkest struggles for survival, and our only allies are the last, fugitive remnants of the race long believed extinct... Neil Travers and Curtis Marin are back in action in the second volume of the HELLGATE series. While the Confederacy tries to use the DeepSky Fleet to crush the breakaway colonies, a handful of rebels may be the only force standing between the new human homeworlds and the shadowy enemy which almost exterminated the last race to whom these far-flung stars were home. The Resalq have survived ... but the threat is greater than ever. On one hand, the Zunshu strike out of Rabelais Space, also known as Hellgate. On the other hand, the government of Earth is determined to bring the unruly colonies back into line. Between the two, the humans of the frontier worlds and the last of the Resalq fight to survive, and the odds are against them. Nothing is what it seems, with allies within the Fleet and enemies among the Freespacers. And when Travers and Marin are assigned to the super-carrier Kiev on the Omaru blockade, all bets are off, and it's every man for himself.  Read the first 10% of this novel right here, in PDF format
Novel length: 180,000 words Rated: adult (18+; sex, violence, language) ISBN 0-9750884-3-2 Publication date: 2003 Publisher: DreamCraft Price: $9.99 - ebook Cover: Jade      
 
  
READER REVIEWS: HELLGATE #2: Deep Sky REVIEWED BY ARICIA GAVRIEL Just what you needed, another review here from me! (And just to get you really PO'd, I saw the last four chapters of the new Death's Head in the pre-press stages: 'awesome' doesn't describe it!). But this is a review of DEEP SKY, and I promised to be brief. So... Once again I'm amazed. The storyline is as convoluted as the first book and the characters are even better 'configured.' Like they're had time to settle in. I LOVE Vaurien in this book. Then there's the new guy, Michael Vidal ... wow. I only hope MK is planning on putting Vidal into future HG books. I was impressed with the 'worldbuilding' for the 'ice planet,' but my fave part of the book is the high-tension part about the ore-hauler that's going to wipe out Omaru Colony. Wow. More, more!! Okay, I'm an SF-nut. I confess. I also have been a big fan of gay-SF since I discovered the "gay-books-genre" about 10, maybe 12 years ago ... and have been lusting after Jarrat and Stone since about three days after DEATH'S HEAD arrived in my mailbox. Mel's SF is pretty close to 'Aricia's Ideal' (see my review of the Jarrat/Stone books). But when I got my teeth into the first HELLGATE opus I was *still* surprised. I don't know what I'd been expecting; for some reason I'd been thinking more along the lines of a space-fantasy. But what I read was ultra-realistic from page one to the end, and it's a huge novel. DreamCraft packed it down into a small space, which also minimizes shipping costs. For folks on a budget, that helps a lot. The HELLGATE books have the 'flavor' of an epic, from the very start ... and you gotta love these two characters. Is it me, or are Neil Travers and Curtis Marin a little bit like J and S ?? There's the big dark butch one and the smaller more 'intellectual' one who still kicks butt with the best of 'em. Maybe I'm just starting to recognize MK's 'ideal heroes' after all these years! Criticisms? Lord knows, I'm not one to criticize a Keegan novel (I don't even notice typos, though I realize a lot of habitual proofreaders do). The only thing I found to criticize about HELLGATE #1 is absolutely unavoidable in the book: it's HUGE and the story is COMPLICATED. The novel is AWESOME, but you have to stay wide awake and read the whole thing. MK doesn't repeat himself, and if you skip pages or read while falling asleep, you can miss the details and 'lose the plot.' I solved the whole problem by reading HELLGATE #1 twice, and enjoyed it more the second time around. Cheers to DreamCraft for making it possible for an epic-size story from MK to take place. HELLGATE #2: Deep Sky REVIEWED BY J.GRENFELL I am so surprised. Not at Keegan's book (which is as good as ever) but at myself. SF ain't my thing. I can't usually stand Star Trek! (Usually only watch for a guest-star etc. etc.). But I got into the HELLGATE novels fast. Maybe because of the gay content, which is called 'slash' where I come from (if you know what that means, you know where I come from!!!). This was the first Mel Keegan I'd read. Then I borrowed everything I could get from friends, and am hooked. Looking forward to the next HELLGATE book, and am one of the lucky early-birds who got in for the DEATH'S HEAD pre-order special. Having a ball with this stuff! Mel Keegan comments on DEEP SKY The title for this one was originally 'Probe;' (readers with sharp eyes will notice it on the 'due' list of the first book, under that title), but as often happens, the story attained a character and nature of its own, not only in the writing, but in the re-writing. I found the plot line swerving away and the emphasis changing ... the original material (about a Zunshu probe, obviously: hence the original title) is still there, but on the last draft it had been so far supplanted by other events, the title was just not right any longer. Ooooh, great. So then the hunt was on, with about four weeks to spare, for a new title! Sometimes you have a title in mind before starting to write; in fact, a title can even suggest a whole story. But for this one it was quite a chore to come up with a title which really covered the story. I think 'Deep Sky' says it all. And I loved DreamCraft's remark (somewhere on this site), that it reads like a work conceived by Greg Bear and Tom Clancy, conspiring to write a gay SF-thriller! That really made me smile. |
      
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