Exciting story about the discovery by humanity of a dangerous parasitic alien species. This book is broken up into five parts, where parts 1-3 are shorter sections that introduced the parasite & the danger it posed, whereas parts 4-5 were longer, with 5 especially focusing on humanity's effort to fight the threat. I do think parts 1-3 were perhaps too short, not having enough space to slowly build up to the danger & instead had it be a rather quick introduction. I also felt that many of the characters, even the ones meant to be older, felt rather juvenile. This book's major strength came in how well it built up tension & excitement, especially in parts 4-5. Overall an enjoyable book ( )

2.5 stars

On the wall, written crudely in dark-brown blood, was the phrase, “They take our skin.”

Parasite was a scifi horror that was light on worldbuilding but incredibly readable in its cotton candy creepy and chilling psychological and physical danger. Each section is about different station, Stations 331-333 were short stories. 331 introduces the Parasite, 332 shows that it is attacking, and 333 shows how big the problem is and that it is growing. At first I didn't mind the lack of worldbuilding as I thought it worked to place the reader in the station occupants' shoes and help the isolated and danger feeling at each station. By 333 though, I wanted to know more about Central and the structure of the world these characters were living in that I was reading about.

Stations 334 and 335 were novellas and the longer page count allowed the author to expand characters and the world. 334 ended up being my favorite and it's because the characters were more flushed out. It centers more on Maren, a woman working at the station but the crew surrounding her get more details added to them too. This felt more like a story and less like a quick pop of scary. 335 switched it up a bit and starts off placed on a planet before moving out to a station again. Starting off on the planet gave a little bit of the worldbuilding I was missing, we get to see more of civilization and descriptions of the hows and whys of the space stations. The characters, though, were stereotypes/caricatures and mere sketches of them at that.

There were times that I struggled with if some of these scenes were actually creepy or if I was supplying more than my fair share of atmosphere and setting, taking from all the scifi horror movies I've watched. I breezed through this book but a reason for that was because of the cotton candy lack of worldbuilding and depth to characters. Still, this was a diverting afternoon read.

With this ending line:
The war had only just begun, but at least now humanity had a chance. and with characters that we left surviving, there is definitely room to continue the series and I would pick up the next book. ( )