Genre: Science-Fiction
Description:
In
a post-government post-Terran world, space-based humanity is beholden to
mega-corporations. The life style is largely based on alien tech, found on
Sedna (once a planet, now demoted). Said tech caused the Artifact Wars between
corporations ‘mining’ the alien tech discovered on Sedna. Now, life goes on
between planets and hubs. People eat ersatz food and breathe recycled air. The
rich get ridiculously rich and everyone else scrapes a living. Sound familiar?
Eriksen draws good parallels with the way we live now.
Author:
Eriksen is a retired engineer who has
consumed SF all his reading life. Back in the day, he says, SF was about what
marvels await us (and, as anyone of a certain age interested in SF knows, quite
a lot of science started life as fiction). But now, says Eriksen, too much SF
is about how we’ve messed up and just how bad our failure is going to hurt. So
he has set out to write stories to give his readers something to love.
This is his first novel. (I look forward to
more.)
Appraisal:
Eriksen’s first novel has won several awards
in the genre. And he has a ridiculous number of reviews on Amazon for a
self-published author. I agree with the awarders and fellow reviewers: he has
got the goods. This is a fine, pacy read.
The nub of the book – as trailed by Eriksen
in his publicity – is a hidden treasure at the furthest edge of our solar
system. Three beings are thrown together to go get it. They hate each other.
(Not a lot of subtlety about this book). And the getting of the McGuffin turns
out to be way more difficult than they imagined. (Of course.) But they
persevere. 500 (or so) pages later the outcome of this particular adventure is
certain. A sequel MUST follow!
There are little problems with the book: it could
be shorter (there is a lot of repetition), there could be less ‘will they won’t
they’ about two of the characters, there could be less swearing (I’m good with
Anglo-Saxon, but in the end it began to wear even on me. The amount of effing
and blinding is particularly unfortunate as, in his Afterword, Eriksen
encourages readers to suggest it for their book groups.)
But these things will only occur to you
after you finish the book. This is a space romp. The space ship has wonderful
fictional widgets and gadgets welded together by a man whose background in
engineering shines through. His world-building is first class. His AI and
computer extrapolations are too.
If you enjoy hard SF you will like this
book.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
A LOT of swearing.
Format/Typo
Issues:
I wasn’t clear if this was an ARC or not.
There are some proofing infelicities which may have been caught at a later
stage, some of which do affect sense.
Rating: ****
Four Stars
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate word count: 150-155.000 words
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