Recently I got several dozen science fiction and fantasy novels for free from Instafreebie. Getting the books meant getting their authors’ newsletters too. I unsubscribed immediately from newsletters that were all fluff, or talked about angels, demons, shape shifters, mermaids, steampunk, vampires, werewolves, alpha mates, alien romances or featured bare chested men or barely dressed women, were aimed at YA audiences or were incoherent; no point in wasting the writers’ email quotas or my time. I’ve been going through the rest and reading the books which have interesting titles or covers (yes, it is hard to judge a book by its cover), or the author sounds like someone who has a story to tell.
So far I’ve found some real winners, the Excalibur Rising series and the General’s Legacy series are excellent. A few have been so bad I deleted them immediately and most have been so-so. This post reviews two in the so-so bunch.
Zero Flux by Carol Van Natta has a super cover. What’s not to like with a flyer in a cave and the subtitle about the Central Galactic Concordance? The novella builds on the cover with an interesting premise and setting but fails to deliver any sense of danger or tension. Things just happen.
Luka Foxe’s old mentor Einer asks Luka and Mairwen to help him investigate two people found murdered in an ice cave on Luka’s very cold home planet. Luka, Mairwen and Einer nearly die when the ice cave partially collapses and survive by taking refuge in an abandoned lab facility. Unfortunately the facility alarm alerts the murderer who shows up and starts hunting all three.
This sounds exciting but it’s not. Events happen with no sense of dread or tension from the danger, even when Luka realizes Einer has hidden much. Author Van Natta tells us that Luka fears for Mairwen’s safety and his own, but we don’t feel it. It’s flat.
The characters don’t have personalities. Luka and Mairwen have unusual powers that don’t add much to the story. The setting, an ice cave, should have felt cold. It didn’t. I couldn’t visualize much nor was it interesting.
Cold Flux is a novella in a larger series that has quite a few higher ratings on Amazon. I finished the novella so am rating it 2 stars. I kept reading expecting it to get better, it just never did. There were hints of an interesting backstory and the writing wasn’t bad.
Soldier of Charity by Luke R. Mitchell is a prequel to his post apocalyptic Harvesters series. Mitchell writes well and his main character Jarek is sympathetic, about 18 years old, idealistic and owns a protective high-tech exo suit with its own AI.
I mostly liked Soldier of Charity and wanted to like it more, but the novel was limited by its protagonist’s youth and lack of wisdom. Several times I wanted to shake some sense into that kid. For example, he joins a paramilitary group that protects outlying farms in exchange for some of their produce. Now this is either the beginnings of feudalism or a classic shake down racket, but Jarek falls for the idea and joins the group enthusiastically.
Pryce, one of the men who recruits Jarek, is ambiguous. He tells Jarek that the boss will never ask him to do something he doesn’t believe in, yet slowly leads Jarek into all sorts of grey areas. Jarek starts to question these but continues to believe Pryce. The ending with Pryce is a bit unbelievable as I doubt the character would have acted as he did.
Overall the novel is well done with solid writing, an intriguing idea and fairly well-done characters. Ultimately my rating of 3 stars reflects that it is YA fiction and I didn’t enjoy it enough to check out the next books from this author. Older teens would like this.
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