Saturday, August 3, 2024

Review: Belle’s Ruin by Joseph McRae Palmer


 

Genre: Science Fiction

Description:

This is also known as “Belle Machado, Book 1”. It came out in July 2023 and was billed as the first of a series of four. All four have now been published, the most recent one in January of this year.

This is hard SF. It is about surveying distant planets. The Kepler corporation running the work on Clinton planet is as arbitrary and dour as our own mega-corps. Bureaucracy rules. Working conditions are tough. The people working for it are just like us. Palmer uses different points of view, with equal success, putting us occasionally into the heads of people who can fill in some plot holes for us; the main viewpoints are those of Belle Machado and pararescuer Grant Stewart.

The planet Clinton is teeming with life, all of it inimical to humans. There is nothing hospitable here. But it is the most Earth-like planet humanity has so far discovered. And they are determined to explore it. Belle is sent on a surveying mission, the parameters of which are changed at the last minute. And then the fun begins…

Author:

Palmer has been very busy writing and publishing over the past couple of years. As well as the tetralogy above, he is also now two books into his next series: ‘The Void Walkers’.

As well as writing speculative fiction, Palmer has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and is an engineer in the telecommunications industry. He was raised in Alaska (which may explain his interest in extreme geo-climatic conditions) He has worked as a missionary (which may explain his interest in cultures not his own). He and his family live in northern Utah, USA.

Appraisal:

This is good, rock-solid, hard SF. It’s got space ships and alien worlds: the whole nine yards. But even for a SF fan of longstanding there is still plenty here that is new and fresh.

There is (as one hoped) more to Planet Clinton than meets the eye, and Palmer wastes no time in plunging the reader into action. Then come the discoveries.

The book peels like an onion: under the official mission is another. Under the monolith which gives the books its title is … something else. Under that, something else again. Later, yet more layers are revealed. Thus the plot broadens and deepens. The plotting and exposition are good and taut, in a book of less than 300 pages.

There is plenty of well-crafted tech in evidence, and suitable jargon to go with it, all of which worked well. I got a real sense of vehicles being flown, environmental suits being tested to their limits and beyond, and the difficulties of progressing as a pilot in a fiercely competitive field with not enough ships to go around. Palmer is particularly good (yet still entertaining, thankfully) about rules and regs and paperwork (sigh). He really has thought this world through carefully.

The only problemette I had with the book was that the structure Belle finds is not a ruin. And it is not hers …

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: Judi Moore

Approximate word count: 70-75,000 words

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