Why is Mars red? The answer may surprise you.

Johnathan Hill
Black Hole Sun review chapters 1-12
By: David Macinnis Gill
Do you know why they call Mars the “Red Planet”? It’s not because of the rust colored rocks on its surface, no, it’s because of the trigger happy, gritty mercenaries that roam the cities and carry out any job if you’re willing to pay them.


Durango is one of these mercenaries, a “dalit” as the people on Mars call them, masterless, outcasted regulators. Along with his A.I implant Mimi and his partner Vienne, they take up dirty deeds for dirt cheap to pay for meals. A mission to rescue two children from a man named Postole, who took them hostage. After Durango and Vienne arrive, Postole escapes with the ransom, but Durango and Vienne are able to save the two children who are from a wealthy family.


Later on in the book, the boy who they saved approaches Durango outside of a pub and offers him money to train him on how to be a regulator like him, but Durango declines his offer as trouble stirs up inside the pub: three miners, who are considered the lowest of the low on Mars’ social ranking, are asking for regulators to come prepare and train miners’ from their camp from the evil Dreau race.


The Dreau are humanoid like rat monsters who follow the orders of the Queen, they are bloodthirsty and ruthless, demanding sacrifices from camps around their underground hideouts to keep them from getting too hungry and go out hunting, and most of the time, the Dreau crave children’s flesh.


Durango accepts the offer to train the miners and brings along two more dalit regulators, Jenkins and Fuse. Fuse has a love interest for Vienne, but as we read further into the book, we get hints that Durango also has feelings for her, introducing the complicated love triangle, as we see that Vienne has no interest for either of them, yet Durango tries his best to keep their partnership professional.
Before Durango’s crew leaves for the miner’s camp, he stops by the prison to see his father. Through tense dialogue, we discover that Durango’s father leads a whole group of three hundred regulators, and Durango and Vienne were apart of it. Durango’s father was the one who killed Mimi and turned her into an A.I implant for Durango, but we aren’t sure why, or how, along with the fact that Durango’s father wants him to be more than a mercenary, so he thinks of Durango as a disappointment. We also learn that Durango has a deal with a man named Mr. Lyme, to keep Durango’s father fed and alive in prison, and that Durango will kill Mr. Lyme if his father is killed in prison.


I think that the book has a slow start to it, as you don’t learn what dalit means until a few chapters in, also a regulator isn’t clearly described yet, but I assume that it’s just another word mercenary. The chapters are also very short, as I’m 12 chapters in yet there has barely been any conflict, the only time so far was when Durango went after Postole for the hostages. Mimi being an A.I implant is a handy teammate for Durango to have, but you don’t learn how she works till later in the book by piecing what Durango sees together, I managed to narrow it down to Mimi being an eye implant, but we don’t know why she got turned into an A.I.

I chose this book for a different story from what I’m normally into reading, personally I would rather read about swords and weapons and kingdoms than guns and robots and power armor, but I would recommend this book to anyone interested in science fiction as long as they don’t mind the slow start to the book in terms of action.

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