Nathalie Mallet The Digging Crew

The Digging Crew

Nathalie Mallet

LTD, Jun 2005

ISBN: 1553161432

Fifteen years old Samantha "Sammy" Chang was given the mandatory sentence with no probation or appeal of ten years of hard labor as a topsider working on hostile planet Carmel 5 under the no nonsense watch of a Droid guard for stealing a watch. When a cave-in kills numerous of Sammy's peers, the outraged teen pushes the droid into the hole that is the burial place of the unfortunate female prisoners. However, her action was transmitted by her victim to its peers.

Sammy is forced to join the lifers, diggers working four miles below the surface. Her new peers are angry, mean, and violent. Hatred is the norm and life expectancy is single digits. Crew 56 Leader Muscles takes the teen on her team. Meanwhile rival Crew 79 wants them dead and the mine director is even more dangerous towards Sammy's squad. The only remote chance of survival is to flee deeper into the uncharted caverns and if they are able to get outside undetected race across a perilous wasteland, but to what, none know.

Mindful of Roger Corman's women in prison flicks, THE DIGGING CREW is a wonderful tale of survival. For the females Crew 56 to survive they must work as a team protecting each ones back especially from hostile foes, deadly droids, and a nasty mining director. The trek through the caves and the wasteland is action-packed, but somewhat repetitive as the danger never truly changes although the foe does. Still this is a terrific futuristic thriller in which the strong survive and these women are some of the strongest (who will mess with Crew 56 leader Muscle who's over six foot frame lives up to her name except perhaps Crew 79 leader Marinka).

Harriet Klausner