Phil Rossi’s Crescent is very good. You should read it, enjoy it and then give it to all your friends for Christmas.

Assuming your friends don’t scare easily of course.

That’s the short review. I know you’re busy and thought you might like a quick version of the full review.

Crescent starts of on… er, Crescent; a floating monstrosity of a space station so far off the beaten track it’s like a wild west border town crossed with Babylon 5. Actually it’s more like an old west town crossed with the Millennium Falcon. Rossi has set up the architecture of Crescent Station perfectly, and I got a grungy, almost claustrophobic feel to the place.

The hero of the piece is Gerald, a slightly down on his luck salvage hauler press ganged into working for Crescent Station’s incredibly dodgy Mayor. Rossi has invested Gerald with enough self aware humour to take Gerald from what could have been a cookie cutter character into a genuinely interesting story lead. In particular I found Gerald’s interactions with his AI controlled ship, Bean, to be really entertaining. I’m not sure if Bean is a nod to Orson Scott Card or not, but if you’ve never found AI characters interesting Bean could be the one that does it for you.

Crescent has a wide range of characters, both major and minor that back up Gerald’s easy going swagger. Of course there are some purely evil bad guys, but for the most part Rossi invests just as much effort into rounding out the minor characters as he did into Gerald. The result is a very organic feel to the station. You feel like it could be a real place, with these people occupying the positions he gives them in the book.

Of course no sci-fi horror story would be complete without its monsters, and Crescent doesn’t disappoint. Phil Rossi’s creatures are every bit as creepy, scary and memorable as any horror buff could hope for. I can’t really tell you anything about them though. Party because Rossi leave’s a lot of their details to your fevered imagination, and party because what I do know about them could ruin the story for you.

Suffice to say that if you’ve got a vivid imagination then Crescent’s horror elements will stick in your mind for some time to come.

If I had one criticism to level at Crescent it’s that I wanted more. The characters are the kind of people you want to spend more time with. I think the characters as they are at the end of the book (man it’s hard to keep spoilers out of reviews) could easily carry another novel or two set in the intricately detailed world Phil Rossi has set up.

Highly Recommended folks, go read it.

You can find Phil Rossi’s web site at http://www.philrossi.net/ where not only can you buy Crescent you can hook yourself up with a bunch of free fiction, podcasts of his latest book Harvey and avail yourself of shirts that proclaim “Phil Rossi Scares Me”.