If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here All right, before we get into anything, I've got a bit of disclosing to do. Being an audiobook producer who specializes in speculative fiction (and also likes to eat), and given that the author of this book is pretty easy to get in touch with, I have reached out to him about producing an audiobook of this title. I produced an audition, and he seemed pleased with it, but as of the time of this writing/recording, nothing has been officially finalized, either yes or no. I bring this up because this review is going to be fairly glowing (it can't be helped), and I want to assure everyone that I've completely divorced my wanting to produce the audiobook from my evaluation of the quality of the title itself. This is not meant to be an attempt to get into the author's good graces, just an honest evaluation of a piece of fiction I read. Whether or not you believe me or take any word of this review seriously in light of this information is up to you, but I wanted to air that out right up front. And with that done, on with the review. To be honest, it's a bit difficult to know where to begin pulling threads with this book. There are elements of all three sub-genres of speculative fiction in it, and they're interwoven so thoroughly that it's nigh impossible to classify this as strictly science fiction, or fantasy, or horror. Yes, it has spaceships, so it falls neatly into sci-fi. It also has magic, which is usually a trait of fantasy literature. And the majority of the book takes place in Hell, which if that doesn't qualify it as a horror novel I've never read one. This book is, at least in my experience, a completely new animal, and other than enjoy every page I'm not certain quite what to do with it. So maybe a spoiler-free breakdown of the general plot is a good starting point. The book focuses on a group of space pirates, and their captain's main goal is the utter destruction of The Guild. The Guild is a bit like the Spacer's Guild from Dune. They have near-complete control of space travel (at least interstellar space travel), and oh yeah, they engineered the genocide of his race. This isn't giving anything away, that's made clear in the first few chapters. So they hook up with a group of renegade scientists who are creating a ship to travel to other Strata to find someplace outside of the Guild's control, and during the ship's maiden voyage something goes horribly wrong and the ship is transported into Hell. This, of course, leads to all kinds of hijinks and horrible situations, all of which kept me on the edge of my seat and were immensely entertaining. In an episode of the Superversive SF Podcast, Mr. Niemeier described it as, "Outlaw Star meets Event Horizon," and honestly I think that's the most apt description of this book anyone could give. The plot of this book is one of the densest I've encountered that was written post-1980, and there isn't a wasted paragraph in the entire book. Mr. Niemeier told me it was around 140,000 words, and since reading it I can safely say that all of that is necessary. There isn't a drop of fat on this book. All killer, no filler, is the phrase I used to describe it in my review on Amazon, and I stand by that. There are very few books I would describe that way, and not even Dune (one of my favorite sci-fi novels) gets that appellation from me. Dune has a bit of fat that could've been trimmed. Not quite so bad as certain chapters of Les Miserables, but let's all be honest and admit that story has a bit of a muffin top. Nethereal is a lean, mean, beast of a novel, and that's very impressive for a first offering. I've heard it said that a novelist's first novel is always their best, and I've heard it said that the first novel is the worst, and I've encountered authors whose quality seems to fluctuate wildly. I'll remind you of Dune, and then compare that to Dune Messiah, then to Children of Dune. Either