This is a book written by an experienced wordsmith who has dropped the ball on writing a genre book. Even when you are an entertaining artist, it’s not good enough to know all the memes and all the traditional scenarios and dump every one of them on us in great profusion.
“Fathoms Uncharted” is the Space Opera to surpass all Space Operas. In his desire to overwhelm us with genre indicators, the author has included material from two completely different types of books. First is a YA version, with children as main characters, likeable adults and friendly robots and all that fun stuff. Far at the other end of the spectrum is the gritty version, where everybody is always fighting with everyone else, suspicion is the order of the day, and blood flows copiously.
The problem reveals itself in the smallest details, and then grows as we read on. In an effort to mimic real speech, the writer uses truncated sentences, and while this achieves a realistic effect, it can interfere with the meaning of the passage. Many times, I was thrown out of my involvement with the story by a “What did he just say?” moment.
This problem continues at the sentence/paragraph level, with characters constantly making obscure references to things the reader knows nothing about, leaving us mildly puzzled about what is going on. When reader confusion becomes a major source of conflict in the story, we get irritated instead of intrigued.
Another potential strength which backfires is the intensive worldbuilding. Most of the action takes place deep underwater, but there is constant conflict in the reader’s mind (especially in the final battle) about whether the action is taking place in the depths of a sinkhole or on shore. On shore in the depths of a sink hole?
At the widest application, the numerous levels of conflict overwhelm the plotline. A particular distraction is the metaphysical level, with the immortal narrator who appears for no reason, does little, then disappears long enough that we forget about him, until he shows up at the end, presumably to prepare us for another book in a series.
Especially in the final conflict, cliffhanger endings abound. Each character is taken to the brink of being captured or killed, and then the scene changes. A chapter or two later, the same character comes to consciousness in a new setting, excusing the author from having to write the sequence that solved the earlier problem.
It’s too bad, because this is a fun read, with great characters, all sorts of action, and detailed world building. Recommended for Space Opera fans.
4 stars.