A little too light and easy reading for me. Almost like a cozy book. The dialogue came across as cliche and cheesy. Even the characters names just irked me. Works as a stand alone but wish the book carried more depth.

I was hoping this would be an enjoyable sci fi read but it wasn't for me. Characters were underdeveloped and I disliked the plot point of pitting the two friends against one another for the sake of conflict. Perhaps it needed to be drawn out past one book to be flushed out more.

Strong writing, good plot, and interesting characters make this a good bet. I'll have to circle back to his earlier work.

Thanks very much for the free copy for review!!

7/10

Thank you to the publisher for approving my NetGalley eArc request. My thoughts remain honest.

Hello again dear reader or listener, today I have for you a fun sci-fi adventure reminiscent of old Cartoon Network cartoons from the 90s-early 2000s golden years. The Samurai Jack vibes and ambiance were truly unparalleled.

This is my first book from this author and is one I felt could’ve done perhaps better as a duology instead of being just a standalone, but I’ll get to that in a moment. I really enjoyed that we get character illustrations throughout as well, as it really helped bring all the different species to life. Moreover Bruno’s prose throughout is fast paced and flowing, light and simple, but especially evocative.

This book is full of colorful characters, found family and old relationships turning sour tropes, with an added dose of fake history into the mix, however where it shone the most for me was in its world building and scene setting. Bruno’s storytelling brings his world to life in a special way that allows the reader to feel immersed in the different worlds and places the characters find themselves in. It made for an imaginative and fun ride that often gave me a chuckle and piqued my curiosity enough to keep on reading one more chapter than I’d planed that given day.

So in a way I’d say it felt like neither a plot driven nor a character driven story but more of a setting and vibes driven novel. However, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the intended feeling, and don’t get me wrong I don’t mean that there’s not good enough character work or the plot isn’t interesting enough. As I said, there’s an array of colorful creatures and humans and beings coming together to fight the enemy, as well as the groundwork for a really solid character corruption arc. But it was all done way too fast and with several time skips that never quite allowed all the things the author introduced, to land quite properly. At least for me, it felt kind of empty because of it.

Another way to put it is to say that I was shown and told I ought to feel a certain way both in a good or bad context from various events or exchanges but I was never given the opportunity to actually do so on my own. For instance, we’re shown the community Levort builds with his newfound allies and friends but the stakes of them separating never quite felt real to me as I was just seeing them get acquainted in one chapter and told they’d become inseparable the next. Sometimes mid way through one at that… The corruption arc was done slightly better in that regard though and I did get to feel the frustration of the initial misunderstanding building and building until the point of no return but, again, towards the end when it ought to have had a bittersweet resolution, I sadly didn’t feel that invested because the motivations behind it were just put out there without any previous evidence etc that would justify a lot of it.

I’m a little disappointed from this overall as the groundwork for a lot of what I love in such a story is all right there, but it just didn’t go far enough to meet the expectations it set for me for those few things I mentioned. If you don’t overly mind a speedy run through some fun shenanigans paired with space world adventures, an interesting prison break paired with amusing characters that, albeit not given their full time to shine, still remain memorable, this is still an enjoyable book to get through over a weekend or at the beach.

Until next time,

Eleni A. E.

This is my first read from this author, but it certainly won’t be the last. This is a scifi fantasy novel that heavily features found family and friends. It really is at its core about choosing your people and making the best of things. Everyone knows loss and hardship, certainly so does Levort Aatra. Perhaps even more than others. As a prospector, he has to forage and search for every little bit he can call his own, which makes sense, as that is his actual arc throughout the novel itself too.

My favorite thing about the mixture of scifi/fantasy is that it doesn’t feature hard science. The author is creating languages, races, planets. I don’t need to have heavily believable science backing it, I can allow being told what is, is just what it is. And the novel itself progresses at such a pace that you won’t even have time to dive too deep.

I really loved the villain role being kind of ambiguously filled by Levort’s best friend Bayfo. It exists as this really incredible way of showing two sides of the same coin as each of them just want to make a better life for themselves. I love the utilization of the ‘villain’ thinking his friend is so misled that he has to save him no matter what, therefore becoming blinded himself.

Personally a 5/5* for me. I need a physical copy and so do you. I wouldn’t really change anything about this!

DNF.

A very old-school space opera, populated with rubber-suit aliens that physically are reminiscent of Earth animals of various kinds, mostly, and psychologically are completely indistinguishable from humans. The planets seem to have single biomes in many cases, and the spaceships don't appear to require any fuel. It's definitely way up the trope end of the trope-to-actual-science spectrum; what little original worldbuilding there is doesn't make any attempt at plausibility.

But how about the story?

Observing from afar, I'm starting to think that it's increasingly difficult for an author living in today's USA not to write dystopian fiction, which is a pity, because I'm not a fan of it. This is a corporate dystopia, with an obviously evil corporate overlord who's rewritten history to remove or demonize the courageous and generous Beyonders, who want everyone to have access to their utopian tech. Instead, characters like the protagonist are stuck in dead-end jobs which exploit their labour for the benefit of the corporation and force them into increasing debt. He was sold by his parents as a child because of debt, and worked in a sweatshop growing up; sweatshops have, inexplicably, since been abolished (there's no sign of any government that could make the corporation improve its policies, at least as far as I read). When he finds a piece of Beyonder tech while scavenging a post-apocalyptic world, he ends up on the run, using a Beyonder device which opens portals to random places (though always ones that are survivable), in a way that, for reasons that seem more story-related than realistic, can't be predicted or controlled. Fortunately for him, it's almost impossible for a named character to die in this setting (you basically have to be shot at close range; even firing superheated plasma at someone just pushes them away, for some reason, and falling a long distance or being shot only once or from a distance generally leaves the characters just fine).

His one friend is an Enforcer, a member of the corporation's private security, who befriended him when they were children together, but he's a company man and believes the obviously evil boss's disinformation about the Beyonders being a dangerous cult, so the friends end up on opposite sides. In fact, the enforcer, coerced into heinous acts by the evil boss, falls down the slippery slope and becomes a bit of a psychopath, with no sign of the compassion that made the two friends in the first place. At the point I stopped reading, he had just captured his old friend, and since convenient coincidence had played a bit of a role up to that point, I found myself unwilling to wade through whatever dystopian scenes were to come to get to what I assumed would be a convenient coincidence enabling the plot to be resolved.

None of the characters had much depth, even the protagonist; they had, at most, one simple motivation and a plot role.

Very few authors seem to know how (or at least when) to use the past perfect tense these days, and this author is not one of those who do, though at least most of the other mechanical issues are minor and could be cleaned up relatively easily by a good editor.

I'm willing to give undercooked worldbuilding and mediocre mechanics a bit of a pass if the emotional arc of the characters is working for me, but this wasn't, certainly not well enough for me to wade through the dystopian bits. For someone with different tastes, it may well work better.

A really enjoyable read that kept me on the edge of my seat most of the time. I enjoyed the characters and felt like the character building was done well. The universe building was excellent. This is my first book that I've read by this author and now I want to read more!

I had a great time reading this sci-fi standalone. It was fast-paced, exciting, full of heart, loaded with fun characters and awesome tech, and the action scenes were second to none. Let's not forget about the unique alien races and interesting creatures. They were pretty cool too! This book was so much fun and now I can't wait to finally read the Song of Kamaria trilogy, which I've been putting off for far too long!