Jonathan Baptistella Baptistella itibaren 49165 Videmala, Zamora, Spain itibaren 49165 Videmala, Zamora, Spain

Set in a near-future world that's almost relentlessly grim (until you get to the next book in the series and the apocalypse starts, which makes this entry in the Rifters Trilogy series almost cheery by comparison), Starfish covers the lives of a dysfunctional group of surgically altered humans who man a geothermal power station on an undersea rift. I know, it doesn't exactly sound riveting, but Watts fleshes out the characters and their dynamics in the solitude of the cold ocean floor, and perhaps even more importantly he breathes life into the ocean floor itself. The small snatches of the surface world he gives you paints an interesting, picture of a fragile and desperate civilization trying to beat away the endless march of entropy. Like I said, grim.