Driving the Deep is the second novel in the Finder Chronicles by Suzanne Palmer. The first book in the series, Finder, was one of my most memorable Sci-Fi reads of 2019. I adored Palmer's writing style, her world-creation, the nail-biting action and the main character, Fergus Ferguson, a space repo man, was completely lovable and funny. I absolutely adored him.

In this book, we get to reunite with Fergus for another thrilling space caper.

Since the conclusion of Finder, Fergus has been recovering from those events whilst staying with his friends, the Shipmakers of Pluto, who are all well-known experts in the development of AI-spacecraft. The downtime has given Fergus a lot of time to think about the life he left behind and with the encouragement of his friends, he decides it may finally be time to face his past. Fergus hasn't been back to Earth since stealing his cousin's motorcycle at the age of 15, and running away.

That theft, his first, has weighed on his conscious ever since. He finally feels ready and able to try to make amends, with the support of his friends, of course. However, upon returning to the shipyard that houses the storage unit he left the motorcycle in all those years ago, he finds the motorcycle gone and priceless, stolen artwork in its place. What the heck?!

Before he can figure out just what happened in that storage unit, the shipyard is attacked and his friends go missing. He assumes, logically so, that they've been kidnapped for their scientific knowledge and expertise.
Fergus must now try to figure out the mystery of the missing bike, the stolen artwork and his missing friends. Proof that there truly is no rest for the weary.

Ahhhh, this was such a delight to read and exactly what I was in the mood for. I can't believe it took me over 3-years to finally read this sequel. I love Palmer's writing and Fergus Ferguson is such a fun main character. He's easy to root for and once you go on an adventure with him, you'll never want to leave his side.

I need to keep the ball rolling now and pick up the 3rd-book soon. For me, this one was just as enjoyable, maybe even more so, than the 1st-book. I think the attachment I built up for Fergus over the course of the 1st-story, helped to propel this one even higher up the enjoyment ladder for me.

I also just really enjoyed the circumstances in this. Watching the relationships Fergus had built with his friends, even though it was hard for him to get close to people initially, and watching him let his walls down by returning to Earth; both of those things were just so satisfying.

I would recommend this to fans of the Murderbot Diaries. I think as far as action levels and enjoyable characters, they're quite comparable. Overall, this series is fast-paced and exciting, with characters you can get behind and will want to stay with for years to come. I can't wait to read the next book. My only disappointment with Driving the Deep is that it took me so long to get to it.

Even though I am years late to the party, thank you so much to the publisher, Berkley Publishing Group/DAW, for providing me with a copy to read and review. This is a fantastic series!

The second book of the Finder Chronicles series which follows the adventures of the repo man Fergus Ferguson. You can read this one without the first, but Fergus does undergo a significant life event that continues to impact his physical and emotional well-being in the first book. After the dramatic events of book one, Fergus is back with the ship makers contemplating some emotional baggage from his time spent on earth. Taking the emotional leap to deal with said baggage, Fergus heads back to earth, where plans for reconciliation go array. While dealing with the loss of the motorcycle, he aims to return, his friends kidnapped, and as a result, Fergus ends up on a research station that lies beneath the moon's thick is precisely sheet deal in a dark, oppressive ocean. The adventure to get out, rescue friends, and save his family relationship makes this a unique sci-fi adventure.

Fergus Ferguson has a gift, and not just the one that he thinks he has, his ability to put the pieces together to find things – and people – that are missing. Fergus’ more important gift is the gift of making friends wherever he goes – no matter how dangerous the situation or unlikely the friendship might be. Or how incredibly difficult the mess he makes may be to get out of.

Because Fergus Ferguson is every bit as good at making his life into a mess as he is at finding his way out of the mess he’s just made.

But this particular mess is going to be a bigger challenge than average – even for him. His friends from the Shipyards at Pluto are all missing, presumed dead. Or possibly missing, presumed kidnapped. Except for the one who isn’t dead, but is suspected of having caused the kidnapping and/or death of the others. Except she didn’t, but someone is trying awfully hard to make it look that way, in order to make everyone look the other way from whatever really happened.

Meanwhile, Fergus is stuck, deep under the ice on Enceladus, Saturn’s ice-covered moon. After all, it’s easy to hide things in a cold and dark place that damn few people want to go to in the first place. Especially dirty deeds being done, not exactly dirt cheap. Possibly on the public’s dime – or whatever passes for currency by Fergus’ time.

All Fergus has to do is figure out if his friends are down there, where they’re being held if they are, why they were kidnapped in the first place – and, of course, rescue them. Without getting them all killed.

And especially without drawing the notice of “the Bastards Above”.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I loved the first book in the Finder Chronicles. That book is named basically for Fergus, and it’s just called Finder. And it’s awesome.

Both books, in fact, are an absolute treat to listen to, as the entire story so far is told from Fergus’ first person perspective, and the narrator does an excellent job of capturing Fergus’ wry, self-deprecating and universe-weary tone.

Howsomever, as often happens, I listened to the first half of this one and read the second, because I just couldn’t wait to find out how Fergus got himself out of the mess this time. Because it’s a doozy.

This feels like a story about closure, and perversely about opening. There’s that saying that when one door closes, another one opens. For Fergus, it feels a bit like he has to close that first door before he can let himself open the second one. Fergus ran away from home on Earth in his late teens, just after his dad committed suicide by drowning. An act that certainly comes back to haunt Fergus in the deeps under the ice of Enceladus.

But this story begins with Fergus going back to Earth for the first time in two decades, because there’s that door behind him that he needs to close. When he left he stole his cousin’s motorcycle. And it’s time for him to go back and take care of that debt, because looking back is keeping him from moving forward.

No plan of Fergus’ ever seems to survive contact with, well, Fergus, so his plan to get the motorcycle out of the storage locker he’s been paying for all these years turns up, not the motorcycle, but a whole bunch of stolen paintings that seem to be the ill-gotten gains from a museum robbery not unlike the real-life Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft in Boston in 1990.

Uncovering the paintings uncovers an undercover cop looking for the thieves. An obsessed man who is convinced that Fergus was one of the thieves he’s been hunting for years. Of course, his plans don’t survive Fergus either, and eventually, after a lot of misunderstandings and a few bouts of fisticuffs, they both end up trying to free Fergus’ friends.

But all of that turns out to be setup, as fascinating as it generally was. The story is really Fergus’ story, all alone in the dark of Enceladus, desperately hanging on to hope and trying to come up with a plan, in the face of the endless night and the unrelenting dark under the water.

In the end, with the help of new friends and old, including the stray cat Mister Feefs, Fergus manages to find the heart of this mystery. After all, while Fergus’ own plans never survive contact with Fergus – neither do anybody else’s.

This review was originally posted on <a href="https://booksofmyheart.net/2020/05/05/driving-the-deep-by-suzanne-palmer/" target="_blank"> Books of My Heart</a>
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<i>Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.</i>

I thought<strong> Finder</strong> was a standalone but lucky for everyone, it was just the first book in the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/264928-finder-chronicles" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em><strong>Finder Chronicles</strong></em></a> series.  I love this science fiction, space opera with the main character, Fergus is sort of a detective / Equalizer kind of guy.  In <strong>Finder,</strong> Fergus "retrieves" a lost space ship and returns it to the rightful owner in the middle of a civil war.  In <strong>Driving the Deep,</strong> he has to locate his scientist friends who have been abducted and he deals with some family issues.

I really enjoyed so many things.  There is technology and gadgets and even AI.  The bad guys, as usual, are about power and control. Unfortunately, they are ruthless and have no trouble with murder. Fergus is the best kind of character, a MacGyver kind of guy with a real compassion.

There is a new character, Zacker, who I'd like to see again. Fergus meets him when he is trying to resolve some personal issues and ends up taking him off Earth to Pluto. Zacker is a retired police detective who has never been off Earth.  He turns out to be a handy guy to have on a mission.

This series has a delicious sense of humor which lightens up the action and any violence.  There is much danger and suspense in this adventure and Fergus is so alone. Well, he does manage to adopt an abandoned cat. I love these stories and am happy there will be more!
<blockquote>"In the time we have associated, it has been clear to me that your problem-solving methodology works best when you take the most difficult and inobvious path in front of you," <em>Venetia's Sword</em> said. " I cannot speak to <em>why</em> this should work, but it does seem to be your 'thing'."</blockquote>
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Fergus is hanging out with his friends at Shipmakers of Pluto after retrieving one of their ship in the previous books. With their encouragement, Fergus takes a trip back to Earth to tie up some loose ends with his family when he left Earth. Opening the storage locker he has paid for years he is shocked to find not his cousin’s motorcycle he left behind but some amazing art. Now he needs to find the missing bike and try to get rid of the cop that had the locker staked out. As he is starting to do that he gets a SOS from the AI of the ship he returned to his friends. Shipmakers has been attacked and now ne needs to find his friends and solve the art heist as well. Fergus continues to be a magnet for odd happenings though out the book and the power he was given by the aliens in the previous book sometimes helps him out when he needs it the most. A great book and I’ll be looking for the next one.


Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

Think the blackness of space is scary? Wait till you see the darkness in the ocean below the ice on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Fergus Ferguson is a lost boy with a talent for finding things...no matter where in the galaxy they wind up. Granted, he's not been a boy for quite a while, but his childhood traumas still haunt him, an abusive mother, and a father that committed suicide in front of him. That's bound to leave a mark.

He ran away from Scotland when he was old enough to steal an older cousin's motorcycle, and it's been hanging over his head ever since. Though he's built a career, and a reputation, as a sort of galactic repo man and troubleshooter, been captured and <i>changed</i> by aliens, and found a group of friends at the edge of the Solar System that he'd do anything for, it's his past that he can't get past.

So Fergus heads to Earth to return the bike he's been paying for storage on for decades and to apologize to whoever's left of his family for running off. Only when he gets there he's in for a surprise, getting first caught up in an investigation for stolen artwork, and then discovering that his friends orbiting Pluto have been kidnapped.

With a very cranky and officially retired NYC cop in tow, Fergus heads back to Pluto to do what he does best, find his friends, assuming they're still alive. There's a trail, of sorts, and it leads him to Enceladus, an ocean covered moon of Saturn.

Fergus gets himself a job as a pilot for the transport company that services the icebound world, descending through boreholes in the ice to the perpetually dark sea beneath, where it's all too easy to lose your mind, and where somewhere, someone is doing something that requires kidnapping the top minds in AI research. Someone more than willing to kill off anyone not useful.

Driving alone through the deep darkness is enough to drive anyone crazy after a while, there's more than madness down here. Fortunately, Fergus has a number of talents beyond getting in and out of trouble. He's also a pretty good guy, and though he can be unsettling when you meet him, which is almost always in unlikely circumstances, he tends to grow on people. Which is good, because he's going to need friends if he's going to save the ones that have gone missing.

This is the second book in the Finder series, and though it references things that have gone before you get the idea pretty quickly. Still, that doesn't mean you can't go start at the beginning with Finder (Apr 2019). Either way, this is a good read, a series worth keeping an eye on.