Book Review and Giveaway: The Oxygen Farmer by Colin Holmes

Colin Holmes has created a marvelous protagonist in Mil. He’s crotchety, hard-headed, and willful. Past experiences have conspired to give him a crusty outer shell, and not everyone sees past it. He doesn’t know when to quit, and he’ll need every bit of that tenacity to dig into a mystery that someone definitely wants to keep hidden. Once that secret hatch is opened, death and treachery are released, along with what could be a life-ending dose of radiation for Mil. But who knew it was there? Why is it there? These are the questions Mil must answer, even at considerable risk to his own well-being.

Holmes also gives us some delightfully written female characters. The ones we see the most – Mil’s daughter, Bailey; his granddaughter, Nique; and his doctor and love interest, Emma – are all smart, capable women. We get to see Bailey later in the story. Mil hasn’t spoken to her in decades, not since the accident that took the life of his wife, Bailey’s mother. But we meet Nique early on, and she is fantastic. She wants to continue the family legacy of space exploration, hopes to go on the mission to Mars. When Mil inadvertently botches her chance at that, she’s fiery and feisty enough to tell him precisely what she thinks. But she loves him enough to keep helping him dig for answers, as much as she can. Emma is equally outspoken, both about Mil’s health and about his quest to find out what’s going on. Mil has no shortage of women in his life who aren’t afraid to be honest with him, and I am here for it. I also appreciate the fact that he’s pretty well up in years by society’s standards, but he’s still spry enough to have a girlfriend.

The story is set in the not-too-distant future, and Holmes gives us just enough world-building to let us picture the environment well. He doesn’t expend too much effort creating a lot of new technology. Rather, he uses existing technology and a solid foundation of space-age history to give the reader a good feel for things. As with his book Thunder Road (which I also loved – see my review here), he uses actual history to give his book the feeling that maybe it really could have happened like he described.

Solid sci-fi, excellent characters, a compelling mystery, family drama, a little bit of old Cold War-style political tension – all of this adds up to a rip-snortin’ good read that’s hard to put down! I’ve seen it described as “Tom Clancy in space.” I’d take that one step farther and call it “Tom Clancy in space with a slightly ironic sense of humor.” Highly recommended for anyone who likes a book that’s well-written, that sucks you in, and that’s got just that little something different about it that makes it sparkle. Colin Holmes is firmly on my list of authors to watch, and I’ll keep reading his books with great glee.

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