Cargo Hold 4 by Lonnie Busch is a stand-alone sci-fi horror, and a semi-finalist in SPSFC5.
I read this book as a judge on The Space Girls for the Self-Published Sci-Fi Competition 5. This review is my own personal opinion and does not reflect the reviews of the team as a whole. You can see all reviews and updates for the contest on my SPSFC5 Team Update Page for The Space Girls.
Cargo Hold 4 revolves around the ship Gretel, currently on a multi-decade exploration and science mission with eight crew members. After leaving a planet with samples and artifacts and storing them in Cargo Hold 4, they realise that they have a stowaway on board – despite the planet having no signs of life. The team of scientists decide to investigate further.
Cargo Hold 4 is available on Amazon and you can read more reviews on Goodreads. It is 254 pages long and was published in June 2024.
My review
This book starts really strong, jumping straight to the point from the first paragraph. Straight away we are pulled into this story and the dread, as the crew try to discover what this mysterious alien is and what it wants.
The writing is fast-paced and kept me absorbed, and it’s fairly easy-to-read with no complicated scientific terms or explanations. There is a real sense of mounting ominous horror as the book progresses. A large part of the book follows the captain, and so we see how she is perhaps out of her depth with how to manage this scenario, which definitely adds to the stress and fear of the story. Even though it is quite short, the story didn’t feel too rushed. I also really liked the terror of the ending and that we were left hanging a bit about what might happen afterwards.
I think what was really missing from this book was a bit more of the character development — for example, what was their day-to-day life like, before this happened? Perhaps adding a chapter or two on the mission to the planet where they found this anomaly would have been helpful. It was a little difficult to relate and feel for the characters, who we mostly only see in sex scenes or propositioning each other. (There is nothing too graphic or ‘spicy’ in this book, but there is a lot of sex.) The crew have been traveling together for a long time at this point, but I didn’t really get that impression from the story about who was dating who, or who the close friendships were (which would be inevitable in such a small crew). I also felt that the reveal about the doctor wasn’t necessary — it didn’t really add anything to the story, other than just making him incredibly unlikable.
I did spot minor typos and grammar errors throughout the book (for example, question marks used instead of periods and vice-versa, or ‘was’ instead of ‘were’). I just find this a bit distracting and it would take me out of the story a little.
Overall this was an enjoyable read. I really liked the story and the idea itself, which is really well executed. I recently read The Extra by Annie Neugebauer which had similar vibes. If you are looking for a ominous horror sci-fi with a bit of an open-ended ending, this is the perfect book for you.
About the book
Several years into a multi-decade deep space mission, a team of eight scientists—four women, four men—are exploring a dwarf planet near the Kuiper Belt, loading soil samples, rocks and artifacts onto their ship, when they inadvertently bring aboard a stowaway, an unseen entity which is trying desperately to escape from Cargo Hold 4.
About the author, Lonnie Busch
Lonnie Busch is an award-winning author whose short fiction has appeared in Southwest Review, The Minnesota Review, The Baltimore Review and other literary magazines. Among his awards for fiction are the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize for his novella, Turnback Creek, finalist in the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award, and others. His first novel, The Cabin On Souder Hill, was released from Blackstone Publishing in September, 2020. His newest novel, The Baldwin Hotel, was released December 17, 2022.
Busch is also a painter, animator and illustrator, and has created artwork for numerous corporations, ad agencies and institutions, including the “Greetings from America” stamps and “Wonders of America” for the USPS.
Find out more on Lonnie’s website. Cargo Hold 4 is available on Amazon and you can read more reviews on Goodreads.
