Review by Rebeccaej -- Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga boo...
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Rebeccaej
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Review by Rebeccaej -- Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga boo...
[Following is a volunteer review of "Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)" by Janet McNulty.]
1 out of 4 stars
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Rynah’s home planet, Lanyr, has just been attacked by her lover. Fueled by rage and guided by prophecies, she pairs up with a sentient spaceship willed to her by her estranged grandfather. Together, they collect the team of heroes described in the ancient lore and explore the universe for the crystals that will save her home, or, in the wrong hands, destroy it outright.
This book is an odd read. It contains, among other things: alien abductions, sword fights, characters dodging magma geysers, pirates, a saber-tooth tiger attack, characters running along the walls and ceilings of a spinning spaceship, and of course, sexy ladies fighting with their cleavage exposed. I am genuinely impressed by the way the story weaves these diverse genre elements into a cohesive whole. They are predominantly visual scenes, however, and almost every adventure is described from a visual perspective, ignoring other senses. It reads less like a book, and more like a description of a movie. In places, it’s even possible to see what type of film-editing the author is implying.
Overall, though, it’s simply amateurish. The characters are two-dimensional clichés and the setting is barely hinted at beyond what’s immediately necessary for the plot. What little culture we see is unimaginative and identical to the United States. For example, in a world where Earth is an unexplored backwater with no influence on the rest of the universe, there is an interstellar bar called “Eddie’s Bar,” which sells chicken fajitas. While the prophesy requires four distinct personality types in our hero ensemble, the challenges they face don’t make use of those personalities. An inventor is specified, for example, and yet there are no obstacles that require invention.
The laziness of the character development bothered me most during the sexual interactions. While there is no explicit sex in this story, one character is threatened with rape, which felt insultingly cheap given the lack of nuance. Likewise, in one scene where the female characters dress as sex workers, the antagonists respond to their make-up and opened top buttons by screeching to a halt, drooling, abandoning their goals, and fighting each other for the characters’ attention. This is insulting to both men and women.
The prose is clunky and the author has an annoying habit of giving up her own secrets a paragraph early. In the first scene of chapter one, for example, the reader is told in exposition that Rynah received an engagement ring that morning. Then, she shows off the ring to somebody else and gleefully repeats that she got it just that morning. The interaction is boring because the reader already knows this information. We are forced to view the conversation as an outsider, rather than learning alongside the other characters and sharing in their excitement. The entire book is like this.
I was particularly disappointed in the science of this science-fiction, because it held a lot of potential. The crystals Rynah is searching for are data-storage vessels, analogous to USB flash drives. They are the key components to computer systems that impose magnetic fields on planets that don’t naturally have one. There is a bit of worldbuilding here, suggesting that long ago, an ancient species of people traveled the universe, terraforming planets, settling, and diverging into different races or species. Using the crystals to create a protective magnetic field for each planet was part of this project. The initial attack on Rynah’s home took the form of removing this crystal, and thus destroying or destabilizing the magnetic field.
That’s a creative premise, and I would love to read a book that explored that idea. Of course, if a magnetic field was artificially imposed on a planet, and then removed by terrorists, the planet would no longer be protected from cosmic radiation. Depending on the planet, the results might range from the rates of cancer gradually rising, to everybody who didn’t happen to be underground or in a shielded bunker quickly dying of radiation poisoning. Sunburns would be a problem either way. In a better world, this book would explore the new, subterranean society that forms in the aftermath of the attack.
What happens in Solaris Seethes is that the removal of the magnetic field causes the planet’s crust to shift and break apart. Magma bursts through the new fault lines, and dramatic lava-dodging ensues. This should go without saying, but a planet’s crust is held stable by gravity and the friction of tectonic plates grinding against each other, not magnetism. This would not happen. Attempts to explain the issue only make it worse: Earth is the only inhabited planet that doesn’t need an imposed magnetic field because, unique among all inhabited planets, it has a spinning liquid core that provides one naturally. Lynar doesn’t. It is solid. So where is this magma coming from? The science in this book is fractally wrong. Examine it as a whole, or zoom in to any small detail, and you’ll find the same types of mistakes repeated at every scale. It’s a shame, because it wastes an interesting premise.
About half-way through this book, I found myself searching for something positive to say and settled on the story structure. The individual elements may be two-dimensional, clichéd and unresearched, but the author has a sense of how to build a story. Information is planted and used later. The plot is driven forward by scene-level tension nested within broader conflicts. Subplots and character developments are woven into the second act to keep it from dragging, and the changes in perspective come at logical points and are easy to follow. This isn’t a good story, but it is recognizable as a story.
Then I reached the end, and realized there is no third act. The driving tension—Rynah’s search for the crystals—doesn’t resolve or change for the entire length of the book. After a few hundred pages of the characters running through obstacles, the story simply stops with “to be continued.” Yes, this is meant to be the first book in a series, but a book needs to be a story in and of itself, with enough tension resolved that it feels complete. This is not the first story in a series of stories. It’s simply half a story with no ending.
Ultimately, Solaris Seethes feels like a very well-organized rough draft. It is poorly researched and poorly developed. I rate this book 1 out of 4. The most that can be said is that the story structure exists, but it is not worth gritting your teeth through the painful prose and inaccurate science just for that.
******
Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes | on Smashwords
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1 out of 4 stars
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Rynah’s home planet, Lanyr, has just been attacked by her lover. Fueled by rage and guided by prophecies, she pairs up with a sentient spaceship willed to her by her estranged grandfather. Together, they collect the team of heroes described in the ancient lore and explore the universe for the crystals that will save her home, or, in the wrong hands, destroy it outright.
This book is an odd read. It contains, among other things: alien abductions, sword fights, characters dodging magma geysers, pirates, a saber-tooth tiger attack, characters running along the walls and ceilings of a spinning spaceship, and of course, sexy ladies fighting with their cleavage exposed. I am genuinely impressed by the way the story weaves these diverse genre elements into a cohesive whole. They are predominantly visual scenes, however, and almost every adventure is described from a visual perspective, ignoring other senses. It reads less like a book, and more like a description of a movie. In places, it’s even possible to see what type of film-editing the author is implying.
Overall, though, it’s simply amateurish. The characters are two-dimensional clichés and the setting is barely hinted at beyond what’s immediately necessary for the plot. What little culture we see is unimaginative and identical to the United States. For example, in a world where Earth is an unexplored backwater with no influence on the rest of the universe, there is an interstellar bar called “Eddie’s Bar,” which sells chicken fajitas. While the prophesy requires four distinct personality types in our hero ensemble, the challenges they face don’t make use of those personalities. An inventor is specified, for example, and yet there are no obstacles that require invention.
The laziness of the character development bothered me most during the sexual interactions. While there is no explicit sex in this story, one character is threatened with rape, which felt insultingly cheap given the lack of nuance. Likewise, in one scene where the female characters dress as sex workers, the antagonists respond to their make-up and opened top buttons by screeching to a halt, drooling, abandoning their goals, and fighting each other for the characters’ attention. This is insulting to both men and women.
The prose is clunky and the author has an annoying habit of giving up her own secrets a paragraph early. In the first scene of chapter one, for example, the reader is told in exposition that Rynah received an engagement ring that morning. Then, she shows off the ring to somebody else and gleefully repeats that she got it just that morning. The interaction is boring because the reader already knows this information. We are forced to view the conversation as an outsider, rather than learning alongside the other characters and sharing in their excitement. The entire book is like this.
I was particularly disappointed in the science of this science-fiction, because it held a lot of potential. The crystals Rynah is searching for are data-storage vessels, analogous to USB flash drives. They are the key components to computer systems that impose magnetic fields on planets that don’t naturally have one. There is a bit of worldbuilding here, suggesting that long ago, an ancient species of people traveled the universe, terraforming planets, settling, and diverging into different races or species. Using the crystals to create a protective magnetic field for each planet was part of this project. The initial attack on Rynah’s home took the form of removing this crystal, and thus destroying or destabilizing the magnetic field.
That’s a creative premise, and I would love to read a book that explored that idea. Of course, if a magnetic field was artificially imposed on a planet, and then removed by terrorists, the planet would no longer be protected from cosmic radiation. Depending on the planet, the results might range from the rates of cancer gradually rising, to everybody who didn’t happen to be underground or in a shielded bunker quickly dying of radiation poisoning. Sunburns would be a problem either way. In a better world, this book would explore the new, subterranean society that forms in the aftermath of the attack.
What happens in Solaris Seethes is that the removal of the magnetic field causes the planet’s crust to shift and break apart. Magma bursts through the new fault lines, and dramatic lava-dodging ensues. This should go without saying, but a planet’s crust is held stable by gravity and the friction of tectonic plates grinding against each other, not magnetism. This would not happen. Attempts to explain the issue only make it worse: Earth is the only inhabited planet that doesn’t need an imposed magnetic field because, unique among all inhabited planets, it has a spinning liquid core that provides one naturally. Lynar doesn’t. It is solid. So where is this magma coming from? The science in this book is fractally wrong. Examine it as a whole, or zoom in to any small detail, and you’ll find the same types of mistakes repeated at every scale. It’s a shame, because it wastes an interesting premise.
About half-way through this book, I found myself searching for something positive to say and settled on the story structure. The individual elements may be two-dimensional, clichéd and unresearched, but the author has a sense of how to build a story. Information is planted and used later. The plot is driven forward by scene-level tension nested within broader conflicts. Subplots and character developments are woven into the second act to keep it from dragging, and the changes in perspective come at logical points and are easy to follow. This isn’t a good story, but it is recognizable as a story.
Then I reached the end, and realized there is no third act. The driving tension—Rynah’s search for the crystals—doesn’t resolve or change for the entire length of the book. After a few hundred pages of the characters running through obstacles, the story simply stops with “to be continued.” Yes, this is meant to be the first book in a series, but a book needs to be a story in and of itself, with enough tension resolved that it feels complete. This is not the first story in a series of stories. It’s simply half a story with no ending.
Ultimately, Solaris Seethes feels like a very well-organized rough draft. It is poorly researched and poorly developed. I rate this book 1 out of 4. The most that can be said is that the story structure exists, but it is not worth gritting your teeth through the painful prose and inaccurate science just for that.
******
Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes | on Smashwords
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Latest Review: "The Reich Device" by Richard D. Handy
