The Booklist Review

 

The Beast of Cretacea.

 

You don’t need to have read Moby-Dick to enjoy Strasser’s science-fiction retelling. Ishmael leaves a ravaged Earth for a mission on a feeder planet, where the natural resources needed to keep extinction at bay are gathered and shipped back. He wakes from stasis aboard a fishing trawler, the Pequod, on the pristine planet Cretacea, where he plans to earn enough to pay his foster parents’ passage off of Earth. Mad Captain Ahab’s obsessive mission to kill the mythical Great Terrafin (i.e., white whale) complicates that goal, as does Ishmael’s discovery of the real reason the terrafin are harvested for Earth. Despite the futuristic premise, the bulk of the novel is an old-fashioned maritime adventure, filled with details of the sea life: close quarters, harpoon hunts, pirate attacks, storms, and shipwrecks. Strasser (Fallout, 2013) adds dystopian corporations, time travel, a secret legacy, and more. Recommend to readers of pure adventure on the high seas.  — Krista Hutley