“Hell Divers” by Nicholas Sansbury Smith – A New Home in the Skies

 

Short Summary

Nicholas Sansbury Smith has joined the ranks of many other authors who imagine a hopeless and post-apocalyptic future for humanity when he published The Hell Divers series, with the first novel aptly-titled Hell Divers. It takes us into a world where the remnants of humanity are forced to live on airships, centuries after the Earth was poisoned through World War III. 

The Hell Divers are the ones keeping it all afloat, risking the plunge back on the surface to scavenge for essentials, and the story follows one such team landing in a zone with tremendous discoveries awaiting them.

Nicholas Sansbury Smith Imagines a Scorched Earth

The way we're treating our planet has been making headlines for decades, being more reminiscent of abuse rather than care. Nevertheless, little has been done overall to stray off the path of pollution, and the current as well as incoming climate changes will only grow in their extreme nature. With all the destructive potential we have at our disposal, it's not difficult to imagine a future where we scorch and poison the entire planet, something humanity has to contend with in Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith.

The first book in The Hell Divers series introduces us to planet Earth two centuries after it has been ravaged by the Third World War, leaving the planet poisoned and unfit for life. The vast majority of humanity has crumbled under the pressure, and its few remnants live in airships high above the land.

Though most of the airships have crashed by now, there are still a few going strong, in large part thanks to the titular Hell Divers. They are groups of men and women prepared to risk their lives on the most dangerous missions imaginable, plunging back to a dying and hostile planet in order to scavenge the necessary resources to keep their ships afloat.

Humanity's future seems fairly uncertain, although a small measure of stability does seem to have been acquired... until one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm and in dire need of critical repairs. A team of Hell Divers is urgently deployed to the lethal Hades sector in hopes of averting the impending doom looming above the airship's inhabitants.

Past experience has taught these divers to be prepared for anything, especially hostile and mutated creatures who have somehow managed to not only survive, but thrive in their new environment. However, the sector has great and dangerous discoveries awaiting them, some of which stand to threaten humanity's extremely uncertain prospects of survival.

From the Frying Pan into the Fire with the Hell Divers

Science-fiction is one of the more varied literary genres out there, with every single topic one could imagine having plenty of angles under which it can be examined and paths by which it can be approached. While personally I tend to enjoy the types of stories which take their time for the sake of delivering more details, sometimes action-driven stories do catch my attention, as Hell Divers did recently.

To begin with, I'd say the book is paced almost like a thriller, with the story taking very little time to get going and only accumulating in speed until the very end. There is nary a moment to think or even absorb the events we're going through as our ragtag group of heroes keeps narrowly escaping one situation only to end up in a worse one.

There's a real page-turning quality to the story here, and it managed to keep me on the edge of my seat, constantly looking forward to whatever the next page had to bring. For the most part, I'd say the events unfold in a sequence few will be able to predict, and there are plenty of original elements stemming from Nicholas Sansbury Smith's world which make the story feel unique in a genre where such a thing has become difficult to accomplish.

Our protagonist, Xavier Rodriguez, is perfect for the kind of plot we're going through. We're quickly made to understand he's the most experienced and capable of them all, the best person we could be following on a dive back to Earth. While he isn't too profound (there simply isn't enough time to develop him amidst all the action), he is fleshed out and characterized well enough to make him likeable with some room for further development.

His fellow Hell Divers make up the secondary characters we spend most of our time with, without forgetting the remnants of humanity up in the skies. The way I saw it, the author gave them just enough variety for them to fulfill their functions in the story, but ultimately, they serve as gears which help to maintain the frantic movement of the plot.

The Extinct World Order

Throwing aside the few inevitable cliches here and there, I find the world created by Nicholas Sansbury Smith to be a fascinating one for a couple of reasons. The concept of humanity having to survive in a post-apocalyptic setting while sticking to the skies certainly makes for some jaw-dropping imagery, and while it's probably not the very first time someone has thought of it, I'm not aware of anyone who has managed to describe this type of world in such vivid and evocative detail.

The author's prose never veers into complex territory, following the requirements of the pace at which events unfold. However, he does manage to make the most of his sentences, consistently showing the ability to concisely depict scenes and making them very easy to picture in the mind's eye.

While we do learn about the world through bits and pieces of expository paragraphs and dialogue, much of our acquaintance with it comes from first-hand contact while following Xavier on his all-important mission. This makes everything we learn feel much more current and relevant to the plot at hand, and there is never a shortage of bizarre discoveries for us to make while walking the surface of a nigh-unrecognizable Earth.

There is one element which I would say is this novel's weak point, and it's the science aspect itself. There are a few moments which had me wondering how much of my disbelief I was meant to suspend, such as when the airship suffered from a lightning storm despite being immunized against EMP attacks, or when we were described creatures which evolved identically while bathed in radiation prompting random mutations.

In other words, this is the type of science-fiction story where you're asked to suspend your scientific disbelief a bit for the sake of action, thrills, and exploring a universe with many gifts to bear. It's the kind of book meant to be swallowed in as few sessions as possible, and on this front it succeeds with flying colours.

The Final Verdict

Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith is an exciting new addition to the post-apocalyptic science-fiction genre, and while it can be a bit weak on the science, it compensates for it with an action-packed plot set in a unique and genuinely-fascinating universe.

If you're into page-turner science-fiction books and are interested to read about humanity's survival in the skies while diving back to the hell down below known as planet Earth, then this is definitely a book you'll want to give a chance.

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Nicholas Sansbury Smith Personal site Nicholas Sansbury Smith is an American author of science-fiction and fantasy novels and former worker for the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management branch in disaster mitigation. He has written a few bestselling series so far, including The Hell Divers and The Extinction Cycle, with prominent works such as Extinction Horizon, Hell Divers and Trackers.