Volta is a young MMA fighter on her way to a new tournament when the spaceship she is on, crash lands on a planet killing nearly all the passengers and crew, leaving only a dozen survivors. The planet is teeming with not only dangerous lifeforms, but prisoners sent to die and alien hunters keen on the sport of hunting whatever they can. The only choice the survivors have is to try and force their way on to one of the hunter’s ships and escape. As they make their way across the planet, they encounter a series of lethal creatures and their numbers are slowly whittled down as they continue to track down one of the hunters while trying to avoid being killed by the planet’s denizens.

The book started off well, with the crash killing off all and sundry other than the chosen few, who initially seemed like a good mix of characters. Unfortunately, the initial look at the characters is all you really get for a lot of them as the rest of the story is more about the next way to kill off the next unlucky survivor. Admittedly the ways in which the survivors are picked off one by one is varied to begin with, but by the end, the same threats keep re-occurring. The plot is simple, but with a steady stream of victims who are not that easy to care about, the tension never seems to rise even as their numbers are slowly whittled down.  However, the descriptions of the world are fairly vivid and the threats, as they first get described are well realised and you do get the impression of how dangerous this planet actually is. The other interesting note about this book is that the lead protagonist Volta, is there more for a point of view than actually leading the survivors. She is a strong female character, who happily holds her own and I can see how she could be inspired by character like Ellen Ripley, but in the end despite this, she never quite reaches the heights she could have.

I had high hopes for this book from the opening section, but by the end it almost didn’t matter who survived or not.