Abbott in Darkness by D.J. Butler

Abbott in Darkness Reviews

• 
  Daniel Bensen

  A hungry young accountant ups stakes and moves with his family to a frontier planet, where something fishy is going on with human-alien trade relations. Some people are nice, some are nasty, some have interests in common with Abbot the protagonist, some want what's best for the community, and none of those categories match up. Abbot has to make compromises, trust people, and balance work and family time. He does a pretty good job. I just wish the book had seen another round of revision. The plot sometimes gets blurry, and the worldbuilding ought to have more depth. I am glad, though, that I've found an author I can depend on to write books I enjoy.
• 
  Micheal Boudreaux

  A Sci-Fi Smash
  
  Butler does what many considered impossible in his first foray into Sci-Fi: he took an every day, ordinary accountant and transformed him into a fascinating figure by plunging him into the wilds of a new world on frontier of human exploration, rich with opportunities but also danger.
  
  Splendid characters all around, organic world building that leaves you intrigued and not over burdened, great aliens that look and *feel* alien, and excellent action combine to make Abbott in Darkness a must-read.
• 
  Andrea

  John Sanjay Abbott is in debt, out of work, and has a rare genetic disorder that can kill him if he’s pushed too hard, which doesn’t make it any easier to find a job. Finally, he’s hired by the Company as a forensics accountant, and he and his family are shipped off to the remote off-planet post Arrowhawk Station to investigate whether the traders there are skimming money. They trade with the intelligent crab-like Weavers, but the purpose of their trade troubles John, especially the unexpected gunrunning. His mission morphs into a desperate fight to survive and to protect his family.
  
  Despite the slow start, the suspense eventually ramps up with a slew of murder, ambush, treachery, and war. The story is really a great example of economic intrigue that involves complex commerce, interplanetary trade, and dangerous alien species. The setting is an interesting mix of advanced technology, like hover trains, bio-enhancements, and AI tutors, juxtaposed with the unpredictable terrors of the wilderness. John is a diverse and likable main character who is admirable for his courage, perseverance, and family loyalty.
  
  (This review was originally written for Library Journal magazine.)
  
• 
  Susan

  This was a fun adventure with thrilling moments of peril. It started out a bit slow - but not for long! Thereafter, the pacing was swift and carried me along on a raft somewhere between wild whitewater and an easy canoe trip. The characters were fairly fleshed out and enjoyable - even the bad ones were fun. Yes, a dog was present and did have a few minor parts.
  
  I've read some other reviews where readers were miffed at there being religion in the story. If this bothers you, do not worry as there is only minor mentioning of religion throughout (the wife of the main character is religious ). It's not a main theme.
  
  As far as I know, this is a stand-alone story. I would be interested in more adventures of the Abbott family.
• 
  H.P. Holo

  Never in my life did I think I’d enjoy a book about accounting adventures on a distant planet, but if anyone can change my mind, it’s D.J. Butler.
  
  In Abbott in Darkness, John Abbott is drowning in academic debt, but has a solid chance to pay it off through his new job with the interstellar Sarovar Company. Trouble is, that company operates in a solar system forty light-years from Earth, and he and his family have given up everything just to get there. He has to make this job work, or else they’ll be stranded light-years from home with little hope of ever going back.
  
  But making the job work will be more dangerous than anyone expected.
  
  John might be a humble forensic accountant, and he might have been assigned to secretly investigate corruption and theft at an isolated outpost—but the trouble he uncovers is far more complex than simple careless greed. It’s a plot that could shake human presence on this planet to its core, and thus his family with it. With those kinds of stakes, leaving the problem for someone else just isn’t an option—but none of the solutions presented are simple ones, and soon John must decide whether he wants to do what’s best for his family … or do the right thing.
  
  It should be noted: Epic space opera and rip-roaring adventure, Abbott in Darkness is not, so set those genre expectations aside right now. What Abbott in Darkness is is a refreshingly grounded science fiction novel that takes a realistic look at what it might be like to uproot one’s family to the other side of the galaxy, and then have to deal with the ramifications of a political situation one didn’t even know to expect. There is resultant action and adventure—and parts of the novel are quite intense—but it’s not adventure sci-fi so much as the tale of a normal guy trying to make his way through a potentially deadly situation using normal guy means, and the way it balances these elements makes it one of my favorite novels of the year.
  
  On the sci-fi end, Butler has crafted a planet that is both familiar enough to support Earthly life, but alien enough to seem genuinely foreign—especially in terms of the aliens themselves. The Sarovar Company’s success in the solar system hinges upon the production of Sarovari Weave, an intensely durable fabric produced by the native Weavers. From a human perspective, the Weavers are familiar only in that they’re vaguely crab like; they are barely capable of human language, with mouths only able to form simple words in the local pidgin, such that all trade is conducted through combinations of pidgin and pantomime.
  
  Sarovari Pidgin itself plays a substantial role in the novel, too; since John eventually wants to make his fortune as a trader in Weave, he naturally must become versed in the language—and it ends up having lifesaving usefulness when his investigation leads him to have several dangerous run-ins with some Weavers. It’s not merely a cosmetic conlang, either. There was a part of the climax where I had to keep zipping back and forth between the page and glossary to keep up with the specifics of what was going on, and I loved seeing the language put to such essential use. (There were context clues in the scenes, of course, but anyone who’s familiar with my reviews by this point knows that I would shoot fictional languages into my veins if it were not more practical to just, you know, read them. 😂)
  
  Avoiding spoilers, by the end, the entire book hinges upon John’s ability to wield this language (if inexpertly), gain a new and thus-far-unheard-of understanding of the Weavers’ needs and challenges, and bend all those things under the power of compromise. It’s an exciting book, and there are some wildly exciting and heroic moments near the end, but the heart of the book’s conflict is solved by unexpected (nonviolent) means, and this was one of the things I enjoyed most about it.
  
  Another of my favorite elements is how present John’s family is in the story. It’s very easy for novels of this nature to say “The hero arrived with his family” and then push the family off to the background so the protagonist can do hero stuff—but John’s wife Ruth, his daughters Ellie and Sunitha, and even the family dog Animoosh are all visible and active elements in the story. Ruth is a stalwart pillar of support in John’s life, unafraid to ask pointed questions when necessary, and their precocious, curious daughters provide a vehicle by which to transmit useful exposition to the reader, while also charming the reader—while also reminding John of what he’s fighting to protect, especially when subtle dangers began to creep into the mundane corners of their lives.
  
  There are more than a few scenes where the family gets involved in the dangerous action—namely during a field trip gone awry, and especially during the second half of the climax—and seeing them work together for survival as a unit without becoming an adventure movie stereotype became one of the most delightful elements of the novel (once I got my heart rate back down).
  
  Finally, John himself is an admirable regular guy hero, fiercely loyal to his family—but also the sort of man who will look situations that benefit them in the face and ask “Is this right?” The Sarovar Company’s presence in the Sarovar solar system is one predicated on the Weave trade, rather than imperial expansion of territory, but in the course of his investigation, John uncovers some problems that echo those that usually emerge in the process of colonization. The Company doesn’t interact much with Weavers outside of trade, so they’re not being actively exploited—but non-Company-affiliated human residents (which are something of a mystery in themselves) tend to be denied opportunities to succeed in the same way Company transplants do, in a way that ensures John’s own earnings stay high, and also contributes to one of the many complex conflicts bubbling under the surface of this generally quiet world. The company’s reasoning isn’t nefarious so much as practical, but it is a situation that makes someone with John’s moral character take a step back and say, “There has to be a solution where all parties can benefit without harming each other”—and then use the resources at his disposal to seek it out when all the conflicts threaten to bubble into actual violence.
  
  John Abbott is very much a character who doesn’t want to be a hero, but sees when things need to be done and takes it upon himself to do them. That he does so while struggling with the complex morality of it makes him an even stronger character, and frankly one I’d like to see more of in fiction in general.
  
  All this to say, Abbott in Darkness is a refreshingly grounded tale of a common family facing the worst on a planet far from home, and rising to the occasion. It’s a must-read for fans of reluctant heroes in extraordinary situations.
• 
  John

  John Abbott is a good guy who works hard to support his wife and family. I can relate! He also lives in a world dominated by gigantic soulless corporations whose profit-maximizing, self-serving actions have nasty repercussions for everyone else. Again, this sounds very familiar! In a lot of other stories with this premise, the hero takes down the bad guys but his actions ALSO have nasty repercussions for everyone else. And... That's not a great model for me. Abbott takes action, but he doesn't leave his brain behind. He also works really hard to find a new equilibrium that's as close as possible to win-win. I look around the world right now and it's easy to be pessimistic, or even cynical. But Abbott gives me hope. (Plus an awesome adventure with aliens, gun runners, and surprises in every chapter. This book even makes accounting exciting!)
• 
  Nathan Shumate

  It's really, really hard to write an honest review of a book written by someone you know well, because I know (to a greater degree than most, anyway) how Dave Butler's mind works.
  
  Does it seem like lazy worldbuilding to have this semi-colonized planet be so Earthlike that you can just assume that anything not explicitly examined as novel and alien is just like on Earth? Maybe, but I bet he's setting that up for subverting that.
  
  Does it seem like a bizarre waste of resources that the Earth governments simply cede the fate of a habitable planet to the hands of a private corporation explicitly like the Hudson Bay Company? Maybe, but again, I bet he's setting it up to subvert it.
  
  Do the two last chapters seem like an overt bid for Prometheus Award nomination? ...Okay, got me there.
• 
  Nicholas Ackerman

  A space western / mystery with an accountant as the hero. The deep delve into the economics is challenging but still compelling, while the stage is set for the tense and messy conflicts that fill out the book. The intricate world building is well paced. There are plenty of surprises to keep the reader interested. The story builds tension, interest, stakes and uncertainty.
  
  There are a few other quibbles (Ruth is a good character but way underdeveloped, the resolution of the alien threat seemed a bit too quick and easy), but nothing that would take a star away from the rating
• 
  Liam

  Leave it to DJ Butler to make an exciting, action packed story with a family man accountant that would much rather talk than fight for a main character.
  
  I have some questions still not answered by the end of this, and I wonder if those will be answered, but overall this is a fun story, sort of a western in space.
  
  And I’d like to thank Mr. Butler for the ARC!
• 
  John

  Not enough Aliens. It was bogged down with human politics and greed. The Weavers as the Alien race in the story, were interesting but their culture and life style was never explored. That was a fault. The human story was very good and entertaining. Later. Keep Reading.
• 
  Bill

  Dangers abound when an accountant reluctantly takes the lead in calming relations among corporate/colonist humans, (almost) native humans, and native aliens.
• 
  Jeff

  Fascinating. An interesting story from start to finish
• 
  Graham Bradley

  One of Butler's better works, it reminded me a lot of Heinlein's RED PLANET in terms of the setting and the feel. Very well done.