Wine Dark Deep (Book One) by R. Peter Keith

Being a space-freak and a nerd who often gets his kicks by exploring and learning all that he can about the universe and its elements, reading a hard space science action can be a very overwhelming experience for him. Being that nerd, I never miss any opportunity to read such science fiction. The last space science fiction I read was Andy Weir’s ‘Artemis’ where I explored and experienced the premise that was set on the moon. And now, in R. Peter Keith’s ‘Wine Dark Deep’, I got to read a very intriguing story which was set on Ceres—the largest asteroid in the asteroid bet, millions of miles away from our mother Earth.

The story revolves around Calvin Scott and his crew who were on the scientific exploration voyage on their interplanetary spacecraft, Ulysses. In the middle of the voyage, they needed to refuel their spacecraft and Ceres was their only hope if they didn’t want to return Earth. But the people on Ceres have other plans and their rebellion acts simply conveyed that they didn’t want to help Earth anymore and wanted to develop independently from the earth. In the middle of such political conflicts and conspiracies, Cal couldn’t risk his mission to go in vain and puts himself among the rebellions and that leads the story to take the most exciting and thrilling turns.

There’s no second opinion if either I enjoyed it or not, I certainly found it very exhilarating. The start was a bit slow for me, but as soon as Cal gets down on Ceres, things started moving at a great pace. The author successfully managed to create that constant rush where I could not help but wonder about what would happen next. My favorite part was the chase between rovers and Cal’s escape plan—which was quite insane. It was a very intense reading experience which gave me many thrills and goosebumps through its plot development, the narration and premise building was at it’s best as well, even I like the scientific description of the places and processes, but that can also be its down point for the readers who may not have enough idea about space and technologies related to it. Ordinary readers may probably find it overly descriptive, but yes, people who are completely into space and exploration would certainly enjoy this read.

If there were ten elements in the book then I loved and enjoyed nine of them, but the one that I think the author should consider is its characterization. There were many characters like Helen, Paul Arthur, Henry and Sarah, and as a reader, I could not find them enough engaging in the matter of their background. Sometimes we read characters and we know who they are, where they come from, and what’s makes them exceptional as an Individual character and that was missing in this book. This was just the first book of the series, and characterization is not the matter if the author has worked on it in the following two books of the series.

Overall, it has all the elements that a science-fiction reader will love to read and it’s also quite challenging when certain descriptions and animation in the scenes demand some extra imagination muscles to picture it in the reader’s mind. If one can obtain that imagination state than this will be no less than an insane science-fiction movie. I will highly recommend it to people who prefer intense and hard space science-fiction.

About the author

R. PETER KEITH is a co-founder and creative director of a NASA Space Act Agreement partner company that specializes in the design, fabrication and display of museum exhibits and interactive experiences. For the past five years, Keith collaborated with NASA to produce a simulation-based exhibition that focused on the basic concepts of spaceflight and their possible application in the colonization of our solar system. He is also a recognized expert on the video game industry and its history having been an on-air and off-air consultant for everyone from the History Channel to the U.S. Post Office. Keithcurrently resides in Vermont with his wife, kids and dogs.