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"Terrific futuristic thriller"

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).

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted August 26, 2005

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted January 25, 2007

Sammy is serving ten years of hard labor at the women's prison-mine of Carmel 5 for shoplifting--the minimum sentence under the Dominion's First Strike Law. So she should know better; she should keep her head down and just do her time. But fifteen-year-old Sammy is impulsive, and when she sees that one of the guard droids is in trouble, instead of walking away, she destroys it. Caught in the act, Sammy is sentenced to life, and is transported deep into the core of the planet to join the most violent criminals Carmel 5 possesses--the diggers.

Chosen by Muscle--the leader of crew 56--as their newest member, Sammy finds a family in the hard women of the digging crew. She learns how to crawl deep into rock creases to set live charges. She also learns to keep her distance from the dangerous crew 79 and especially from its latest member, Black Eagle, an Aryan warrior who has had it out for Sammy ever since they first met.

One evening Sammy overhears her teammates' plan to steal one of the new guard droids that can pilot spacecrafts. It seems they mean to escape. But crew 79 gets wind of the plan and intervenes. Soon a dangerous journey begins; a dangerous trip through caves and caverns, across underground rivers, and over cliffs. On this journey the hidden secrets of the diggers' pasts are revealed, new bonds are formed, and old ones are broken--and tensions climb. For Sammy and her crew, surviving the volatile members of crew 79 might prove just as difficult as surviving the native wildlife--which is determined to make a meal out of them. [Science Fiction]