Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I found this book to be an edge of your seat, addictive and suspenseful sci-fi thiller that really exceeded my expectations.
I could see this book made into a movie.
I highly recommend this book to everyone.

Obscura is a book about a successful doctor who's husband has died of a new type of dementia and whose young daughter is now dying of the disease too. The last years her research has focused on curing this disease and her work had drawn the attention of members of NASA, due to dementia like symptoms in space. On top of the doctor's grief about her husband and daughter, she deals with addiction, paranoia, dishonesty from those who want her help.

The book is told in chapters that bounce around in time. I found it an easy read and the timeline changes were easy for me to understand. I didn't want to put the book down and things became especially frightening once Gillian is in space. Add in hallucinations to her addiction and her quest to find out why people are lying to her, on top of being isolated while the other crew members are in status and the spaceship seems like closed in horror house. Things get even worse when she finds out they are going much farther from Earth than she was told they'd be going and she is accused of murder.

The only thing about the book that I didn't enjoy was the extremely graphic violence. I saw the reasons for the violence but I would have liked the book even better if the descriptions of the body damage had been toned down.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for this ARC

I have read and enjoyed this author's other books. I did not like this one. However, I gave it a five star rating because it was a well written book with suspense and mystery. Although I did not like the basic story, I am sure others will.

This was an interesting concept; but unfortunately, it was a little clunky for me. The pacing felt off at times, and it failed to really grab me.

If I had to resort to the old Hollywood 5-second pitch, I’d describe this book as “Shutter Island in space.” That being said, this one deserves much more than a quick cursory glance.

Obscura hits the ground running, forcing the reader to start jogging along if you don’t want to get left behind. A disease similar to dementia and Alzheimer’s is now affecting healthy young individuals, from adults to children. Due to circumstances which you’ll discover once you read the book — because this IS a book you’ll read — Dr. Gillian Ryan is asked to go up to a space shuttle where some of the crew on board are experiencing similar symptoms.

From there it’s one seriously messed up flight. Combining elements of horror, science fiction, and psychological suspense, Hart does an amazing job at keeping the reader constantly guessing. But take away the mind games, the exploration of drug addiction, or the tantalizing concept of teleportation; it’s really the depth of emotion and character that take this to another level.

While I’ve been a fan of the author’s work for some time and have watched his career with admiration, this is the novel that sets him apart from would-be writers. High concept, brilliant ideas, but flawlessly executed. Great to have a book on the contender’s list for top book of the year so early in the year. Can’t recommend this one enough.

A claustrophobic story of paranoia and murder in space that didn't meet my expectations.

Obscura is set in the near future that's more or less identical to our own, excepting a few advancements in technology and the appearance of a new neurological disorder called "Losians." It is a severe form of dementia, and the affected not only experience memory loss, but also trance-states and outbursts of uncharacteristic anger.

Dr. Gillian Ryan has lost her husband to it and her daughter is beginning to exhibit some of the more severe symptoms. So now she dedicates all her hours into researching a cure. Then, one day, she's offered an interesting proposition from NASA. It turns out NASA has been developing teleportation devices in secret and their human testers have started exhibiting symptoms that eerily echo Losian's. So Gillian is asked to join their space station as the lead researcher and get to the bottom of this mystery. As an incentive, they will provide funding for her research. But things don't go at all like Gillian thought it would and, before she knows it, she's embroiled in a murder investigation in which she is the main suspect.

This is the second thriller I've read this month that feature narrators with addiction problems. Obscura shares other similarities with Woman in the Window. The prose is simple and digestible. It's feels very claustrophobic, there's lots of isolation for the main character, and the narration is introspective. With Obscura, the spaceship sets the stage for paranoia and tension; reality begins to blur, and Gillian begins to question her sanity. I quite enjoyed these bits and found them genuinely creepy.

The science is, however, rather sparse. This is definitely more of a thriller/mystery set in a sciency environment with a scientist protagonist. I would have liked better details on how the teleporters worked, beyond "Meh, quantum computers." A deeper exploration of Losian's would also have been welcome.

The setting feels incredibly hazy and mundane. They're in a glorified metal can for most of the book, sure, but it's still a space ship/station from the (albeit, very near) future! And they get to go down to Mars! That's pretty cool stuff, and I wanted to see some excitement and wonder seep into the narration. Instead, what I got was more or less along the lines of:

"It was red, but not the bleeding color she'd seen from space. Up close it was muted, an orange-and-tan composite dotted with rocks. Past a house-size boulder twenty yards away was another biosphere half the dimensions of the one they stood in now, its rounded skin alabaster against the Martian landscape."

I mean, that's not terribly awe-inspiring. This is her first close look at Mars but they may as well be in a bunker out in a random stretch of desert on Earth for all the lukewarm descriptions Gillian gives.

The big revelation at the end isn't as revelatory as I wanted it to be, though the events that lead from it are pretty intense and crazy. The ending also feels abrupt, like the tension fizzled out just as it was building up to something big. Things get wrapped up too neatly and quickly, and the whole story feels...incomplete.

I also found it hard to connect with any of the characters apart from Gillian.

All in all, the story did not meet the expectations that I had from reading the summary. There were good moments and interesting ideas, interspersed with an uninspired setting, bland characters, and a disappointing finish.

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing an ARC.

A fun, quick read, this space thriller blends genres in an effective way that is perfect both for people who love sci-fi and for those who don’t. It has interesting characters that, though not perfectly developed, still show purpose and agency throghout the story. The villain and his motive are a bit more hazy, which is my one big issue with the story. We don’t learn nearly enough about the person to truly understand the consequences.

The pace is one of the things that I admired most. The way that Hart keeps you turning the pages, making the novel a true thriller. The moments in the ship, when the protagonist is alone, are truly terrifying and the tension that we feel when we are not sure whether or not she is a reliable narrator enhances the story tremendously.

For all lovers of thrillers and especially those who like something a little different than the usual police procedural, this is one to choose.

Great story! Looking forward to reading more by this author! Highly recommend!

Thouroughly enjoyable. Bit of a slow start, but very well written. The descriptions were very vivid and the situations tense. Loved it and I hope there’s a followup.

I wanted to read this because I'm a sucker for space station stories and I wasn't disappointed. The pace was well done and the multiple mysteries are laid out very well. As if missions to Mars aren't fraught enough, we have Dr. Gillian Ryan a lead neural researcher along for the trip. She specializes in Losian's disease, a neuro-degenerative disease that causes rapid memory loss, rage outbursts and ultimately, death. It's claimed her husband, Kent and ails her daughter, Carrie. Her grief hampers her but it's her opioid addiction that's really what should have excluded her from this trip. The fate of the mission is given by interspersed snippets of interviews given in its aftermath, so a bit of the tension is bled away knowing <i>Discovery VI</i> didn't go as planned, it doesn't dim the drive to know exactly what went down.

Carson, a former boyfriend from college, arrives to offer her a once in a lifetime chance. his offer coincides with the day she finds out her research is losing its funding. If she goes on a mission to the UN space station to do research she'll have just about unlimited funding for her research (this is the same sort of offer extended to Drs Grant & Sattler in Jurassic Park... and we all know how well that turned out). The research she's expected to undertake is on those who've been subjected to teleportation (the mechanism is really neat where the body is taken down to absolute zero making the atoms traceable and calculated at a fixed point so thereby able to be disassembled and moved from one place and reassembled in another) are changed by it and experience memory loss and other symptoms that are much like Losian's.

Gillian agrees to go along and along with her research assistant Birk, she's stashed a six month supply of her hydrocodone (Carson cleared it because every gram on payload needs to be accounted for) and she's up and away. It's not long before the lies told to get Gillian on the mission start showing themselves. For instance, she's not going to the UN station orbiting Earth. The real mission is to the space station orbiting Mars. A bit farther away, that. Carson and Tinsel were in on the lie but Mission Commander Easton was not. Additionally, they won't fill her in on all the details of the mission. Understandably, Gillian is not happy. Still, they aren't going to turn the ship around and return her to Earth either. She's in this for the long haul. Poor Birk's body has decided that it doesn't like space at all so while he's still stout of heart, his stomach isn't letting him do much more than remain close to the nearest commode. Stasis comes as a welcome sleep for him but Gillian refuses to be put under. She opts for being awake for the 106 day trip to Mars.

Before they even get to Mars' orbit, a crew member suffers a terrible death and Gillian is the prime suspect. She was the only person not in stasis. She also went through a very bad opioid withdrawal during the time everyone else was asleep. The hallucinations she was also having may or may not have been related to the drugs, the withdrawal or something sinister but elusive. Suspected or likely murderer or not, Gillian's still expected to do the work she was sent to do. And then things really get even more dangerous and frankly, creepy.

The culmination of story was well done. The answer to the teleportation sickness turned out to be obvious but was still revealed in an interesting way. This had me on edge right to the Epilogue (and this was a welcome one after all that had come before). This was just a compulsive read. I quite enjoyed Gillian & Birk characterisations and the way isolation, loss and addiction were expressed here. This is also the second book I've read this year set on space stations that plays with and asks interesting questions about our memories & their value to us. Like Chris Brookmyre's Places in the Darkness, this will stay on my mind for a while. And I know it's likely unseemly to ask this when this book hasn't actually debuted yet but... when's the sequel coming? Because you know.... that ending. Definitely recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. It had the perfect amount of sci-fi without being confusing, and the perfect amount of thriller without being too far-fetched. I really liked how the story hooked you immediately, and it was very hard to put down after. Great read.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview Obscura.
Our protaganist is Gillian - she is a scientist who is in the midst of a universal issue - a mind disease, dementia, affecting and killing people. She has lost her own husband to the disease and she sees that her own daughter is succombing as well. She is given the chance to solve the problem and must travel to a space station to expand her research. But Gillian has her own issues that she is keeping a secret and that complicates her mission and her success.
This book is set in the future, and a well written science fiction.
The main character must go thru alot of her own issues while trying to solve the on going current medical problems plaguing the universe. These problems give the reader a better POV on the protaganist, however, i did find there was too much information that as a reader I didn't care about.
Some parts were a bit complicated, but overall if you like this genre you may enjoy this book.

In the not-too-distant future, mankind's plagued with a merciless killer. A disease. Its origin hiding within the deep recesses of the brain. The author awakened me to a horrific storyline that drove deep into the twisting vortex of space. Kept telling myself, "This can't be real." Awash in a hypnotic trance, the pages turned in quick succession as the print danced to a tune of its own making. There was no stopping it. The character-driven scenes consumed me with an aching fear. Dread. This well-written narrative took me on a tumultuous ride of emotion. Not soon to be forgotten.

An epidemic had struck terror within the world. The culprit, known as Losian's was a devastating type of dementia. Straight from the dungeons of hell, far worse than the ravages of Alzheimer's. Fast-acting and fatal in all cases. Indiscriminately choosing victims of all ages. An extremely poor prognosis for civilization. The human race was facing extinction. Evolution had finally met its match.

Highly regarded neural radiologist Dr. Gillian Ryan was lead researcher for mapping complex contours of the brain. In this case, detection of the elusive pathways of the devastating disease. Its conquest had taken her on a perilous journey into space. Not what she signed up for. Her main motivation rested with her stricken daughter. A cure would prevent a shortened life of agony. For both. At a space station nestled above Mars, she'd study infected subjects. Able to conduct tests not sanctioned on Earth. Humans instead of rats. Even at the blinding speed of 25,000 miles an hour, it would take many weeks to arrive at the final destination. Weeks filled with horror. Spellbound, I struggled through every twist and turn riddled with dire consequences that spelled doom from the start. The deck was stacked. Not in our favor.

My thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

In the not so distant future a disease, a sort of dementia that causes both forgetfulness and violence, spreads like wildfire. Researcher Gillian Ryan is an expert working on a cure, but she’s begun to despair. She’s lost her husband to the disease, and now her daughter has fallen ill. Just when it seems things can’t be any worse, she loses her research funding. Then Gillian is approached by an official from NASA. He has a unique situation that he thinks she can help him with, and if she does, her funding will be restored, and then some. Gillian travels to an international space station where crew members are displaying bizarre and all too familiar symptoms, aggression and violence among them. It seems the crew members have become fundamentally changed after passing through what you might call a transporter beam (think Star Trek). As Gillian struggles to come up with answers, she becomes increasingly alarmed, paranoid and claustrophobic on the long trip to Mars. Where do I start? I always wanted a transporter, but I think I’ve changed my mind! Hart takes elements of classic sci-fi and combines them with current technology and paranoia and writes a book you won’t be able to put down

Didn't finish this one--the writing style didn't work for me.

One of the most memorable images I store from my childhood is the idea of the teleporter. You know the program; Capt James Kirk daring to go where no one had gone before and in order to do this he uses the magical services of what was affectionately known on Star Trek as a transporter or teleportation machine. The transporter converted a person into an energy pattern (dematerialization ) then beamed to a target (place) where it was converted back to matter (rematerialization) I tell you this because "Obscura" the excellent new novel by Joe Hart uses this idea as a central theme.

Doctor Gillian Ryan is a recognized expert into research concerning a dementia type illness known as Losian's disease. She has lost her partner Kent to the condition and disturbingly her daughter Carrie is now showing signs that she may also suffer from this life threatening affliction. Research for a cure is expensive and with funds running low she is approached by an old friend Carson who has a proposition for her that may be her salvation offering unlimited funds for her research program if only she will repay his kindness in the following way...Ander's transport is a teleportation system which causes atoms that make up a human body to be first frozen solid then vaporized before emerging at a secondary location as a solid human mass once again (think Star trek) However the users of Ander's transport appear to have been stricken with symptoms similar to Losian's namely memory loss, trances, and violent uncontrollable impulses. If Gillian will help NASA find a cure, travel to the space station via shuttle, then they in their turn promise unlimited funds with research into Losian's disease, and with time running out for her daughter she has little alternative but to accept. However she soon finds herself caught up in a web of deceit and lies, a nightmare three month journey to Mars, a conspiracy that feeds into her own paranoia, with real fears that she will never see her home or her precious daughter again.

I love this type of SF based story where the human race is concerned not only with the decaying state it's planet (melting of the ice caps etc) but also with the need to reach out and discover other solar systems, other civilizations, potential areas that we can populate and yes..."to boldly go where no man has gone before" Joe Hart has written an intelligent thought provoking novel raising question and ideas that are pertinent to society today. I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend. Many thanks to the good people at netgalley and the publisher Thomas & Mercer for a gratis copy in return for an honest review and that is what I have written.