Recommended

“The Death Hole Bunker” starts a new storyline in Kristine Katherine Rusch’s Diving Universe, with some fascinating new additions to the mythology. Hogarth is mapping “death holes” that have been appearing underground on the planet Wyr for decades or more. The death holes always have mummified remains in them, and Hogarth always gets an uncomfortable, tingling feeling when he is near one. This time, there is no tingling feeling and he and his partner Raemi find a staircase leading to a series of rooms, suggesting someone once lived there. In one of the rooms is a treasure trove of rare and valuable items known as “ivory trees”, which are neither trees nor made of ivory. Rather they are branch-like objects made of an unknown material that no one has been able to replicate. And there are even stranger mysteries to uncover deeper in the bunker.

Of all the excellent worlds Rusch has gifted to the world, the Diving stories and novels are probably the most rewarding. This far far future, galaxy-spanning civilization is home to histories and technologies lost to the long march of time, unearthed by people with and incomplete understanding of their application, with often perilous outcomes. “The Death Hole Bunker” is as suspenseful and mysterious as any of the tales that came before. The only drawback is that this is one of those Diving stories meant to part of a longer work, so the long denouement acts a preview of things to come, leaving a lot of questions dangling with no closure for the reader. Of course I plan on reading the promised novel, but for now it leaves me with a tinge of bitterness on the back of my tongue for an otherwise excellent work of science fiction.