2 out of 4 stars
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Review of Solaris Seethes by Janet McNulty
Solaris Seethes is the story of Rynah, a woman from the planet Lanyr, and her intelligent spaceship, Solaris. Rynah's planet is destroyed when Klanor steals the crystal that keeps its magnetic fields balanced. Rynah escapes with Solaris and vows to retrieve the crystal, and to find its five companion crystals, to prevent Klanor from using the six crystals to create a galaxy-destroying weapon. To help her achieve this, she "beams up" four humans from different time periods on earth. Together, they set off on their secret mission through space to find the crystals and save the universe, encountering numerous difficulties on their way.
I found the story of Solaris Seethes quite enjoyable. I usually don't read science-fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised by that. The idea of an intelligent spaceship with a personality is interesting and I liked the character of Solaris. Some of the human characters are quite relatable, especially Brie and Tom. The story is pretty well-paced, action-packed and never drags. There are no pages-long accounts of science or technology, which I find particularly tiring in this genre. Significant effort has been made to create well-rounded characters with different personalities, back stories, faults and strengths.
That said, this book also has a lot of weaknesses in my opinion. I didn't identify with any of the characters, and I never felt any strong emotion towards any of them. Even the ending left me rather cold. I found Rynah particularly unlikeable. I think she was meant to be a strong woman capable of fighting and making difficult decisions, but she just comes across as cold, harsh and cruel. The way she treats Brie especially made me dislike her as a character. It also doesn't make any sense. She alien-abducts a sixteen-year old girl from 2014 and then expects her to be a fearless fighter? The same goes for Solon and Tom. The only one who more or less fits the bill is Alfric.
This brings me to the fight scenes. I'm never one for violent action scenes, but these were particularly disturbing and extremely unrealistic. Solon, Brie and Tom, who have never held a weapon or fought, are suddenly shooting down spaceships, taking down pirates with one blow and killing people left, right and centre. Alfric the Viking is again the only one who is in place here. This unlikely team gets into physical fights on every second page and somehow manages to fight their way through large numbers of hardened pirates without so much as a scratch. I found all this very hard to believe.
Also the world-building was disappointing to me. There wasn't much imagination there. All aliens are surprisingly similar to humans. The only difference is the colour of their skin and hair. The only description of Rynah's home planet we get is "Purple skies, emerald grass, and valleys as big as oceans." The description of a Lanyrian kitchen is identical to an earthly kitchen. Wildlife on strange planets is very similar to wildlife on earth – sabre-toothed tigers, huge wolves and so on. Also the language problem is brushed aside very easily. Not only do all four humans somehow speak English, so do Rynah, Solaris and every alien they encounter.
Another point is the pacing of the story. It is sometimes so fast that important points are just skated over, so that you miss them and have to go back. Wait, what happened? How did the crystal suddenly end up in their opponent's hands? In these crucial moments, I think it is OK to slow down a bit and describe in detail what happened. The focus should be on what goes through Rynah's mind, how she tries to hold on to the crystal, how it is wrested from her, etc. How exactly she punches a pirate, somersaults over him and then kicks him in the head on her way to the crystal is not as interesting to me.
Lastly, there were a number of grammatical errors that sort of grated on me, such as: "The food warmed her stomach, which she chased with mulled cider" and "with a delicacy his beefy fingers would otherwise portray..." I think this should definitely have been picked up in the editing step. Also, there was a lot of use of parentheses to give irrelevant information, like: "A blast crashed into a salmon-colored coral reef (with strips of seaweed waving in the current) before her." There really is no point in letting us know there was seaweed on the coral reef. The parentheses just distract us from the important information, which is the blast that crashed into the reef.
So, all in all, I found Solaris Seethes a reasonably entertaining but not very well-written book. I decided to give it 2 out of 4 stars. I personally won't be reading the sequels, but I can see how others might like to. I think this book would be a good fit for people who like to read fast-paced science-fiction books full of action. If you're expecting a lot of interesting world-building or futuristic science, then move on to another book.
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Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)
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