This story is an interesting combination of genres. It is far-in-the-future Sci-Fi with incredibly powerful science — perhaps too powerful, but more on that later. The hero, Winston, is a standard poor-but-independent Space Opera pilot, but his employer, Professor/Baron Quentin, is an aristocrat/adventurer straight out of Steampunk. The secondary characters are purposefully developed stereotypes from either genre.
It takes a while for the story to get going; there are four chapters of exposition, with a whole lot of interpersonal jockeying. Once it starts, the main conflict involves the breakout of a newly discovered life form from the containment area of a scientific facility. The tension-building technique is that the beasts encounter each successive layer of security, and then breach it. This arms race continues for most of the story, with the technology getting more esoteric and the aliens more powerful. After a while, this pattern becomes repetitive, and we lose our sense of urgency, because we can guess what will happen next. Tension drops, and the story loses power.
Meanwhile, in another universe/level of reality/whatever, another character is experiencing a thematic conflict involving the personal autonomy of sentient beings. There is a lot of discussion about people not knowing what’s going on at many levels. At times, readers feel the same way.
The writing style is somewhat awkward, with fractured sentence structure:
“ I believe people learn the subject best by immersing them in it.”
Also, multiple adjectives have gone out of style, with good reason. This author would do well to try to follow along. Whatever is a “sieved inlet?”
Another historical writing element that has gone by the wayside is overuse of dialogue tags. There are times when this story sounds positively Tom Swiftian.
“This is just a formality,” the professor consoled.
This is a symptom of a larger problem: the author’s tendency to explain things that the dialogue has already told us. Another example:
“I don’t understand,” Professor Q said, lost at Winston’s statement.
We would find it much easier to maintain emotional contact with the characters and the story if the author didn’t call the points in the conflict like an announcer at a hockey game.
This novel contains a good story and great characters, but it is too fragmented and needs editorial polishing to bring it up to its potential.
(3 / 5)
This review was originally published on Reedsy Discovery.