Review by Gwenythepooh -- Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga ...

[Gwenythepooh]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)" by Janet McNulty.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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Solaris Seethes by Janet McNulty brings together yet another motley group, but this time the ship can talk, too. It is a daring tale of exploration to find artifacts across the universe per a prophecy. Rynah and her band of Earthlings must race against an enemy with a nefarious intent for the same artifacts as Rynah and gang. It is a story told hundreds of time, and honestly, this version was unnecessary.

The sad part is, I loved the concept. 'Race for the artifacts' is one of my favorite troupes, add in space, a mysterious relative, and a sentient ship, you have a great formula. However, I couldn't get past the author's horrendous (and highly parenthetical) descriptions. They ranged from forgetful to chaotic beyond understanding and not one of them lacked at least one set of parenthesis. I tried counting but became too enraged to continue. Ms. McNulty committed the crime of oversharing. Nearly half of the descriptions and explanations were unnecessary, and nearly all of them would have been much more useful woven into the story, not dropped in without regard to the story flow. She also committed major no-nos in Sci-fi ranging from describing animals as crosses of those we, the readers, know in our everyday life to the glaring overuse of onomatopoeia. Another large factor in the flop of this promising plot was the character development. A grand reveal in the first few pages of the book could have created immense tension if we knew the characters before they betrayed each other, or even if we found their relationship with each other later in the story.

The characters routinely fell flat. Brie was a placeholder for any sad teen girl reading the story, Alfric is the typical Viking barbarian, Solon the brains of the group, and Tom, who was uniquely forgettable. Each had one discerning factor about them, one factor that was overplayed and repeated ad nauseum. In addition, some of the slight details caused confusion but not terribly, including the sheer amount of coincidence in the timeline. Some is welcome and helps things along, this gratuitous helping of coincidence needs some back-end work to make it feel less forced.

I greatly enjoyed the idea of the prophecy and the clues set out for Rynah by her relation, but the flow and continuity of the story was off. It felt like the author was checking boxes without giving consideration to the journey unless it was in fact checking a box from the list of plot devices to use. I felt jerked within the story. Another main issue was the science. It makes perfect sense to skip ahead and/or out of the galaxy, but the blatant disregard for how a ship can time travel, grabbing four humans from a distant planet formerly thought as myth is beyond bending science a bit for the story, it's using magic you have disguised as science. This hit especially hard when some of the other concepts are given interesting and believable explanations. The crystals for example are explained, albeit it the heavy handed manner of the author but still explained at very least.

I rate this book one out of four stars. Honestly, I almost did not finish. I had such a hard time wading through the story, the flow was constantly interrupted by the author with superfluous interjections, overwhelming disbelief in the most recent plot device, or the nagging feeling that I had already read this but much better written. For instance, the last part of the book is a scenario directly from Star Trek. The only reason I would recommend this book to anyone, even my worst enemy, would be for the plethora of examples of how not to write.

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Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)
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[Jaime Lync]

Wow. That was a harsh but well written review. I just finished reading this book and I read over 100 pages non-stop. Maybe I find this agreeable to me because though I know the story-line is extremely overused and the writing could be much better I haven't read much of this type of books.