Review of The Inner World

[John Rehg]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Inner World" by Phillip L Howe.]

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1 out of 5 stars

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The Inner World is the second book in a series and tells the story of the inhabitants of the planet Home and their preparation to leave before its dying sun explodes and wipes out all life. Home is populated by multiple species of sentient beings, collectively called Homers.

The story begins with a brutal attack from space that drives the Homers underground to avoid further losses and prepare in secret for leaving the planet. While digging, they discover a large ship with an AI entity that selects two of the Homers’ children, Kyle and Kim Wayne, to lead them into the future. The ship’s cavernous interior gives the Homers a head start on setting up a community below ground.

The story follows Kyle and Kim as they learn how to work with the AI entity to build a society, including farming, food distribution, a government, schools, entertainment, and a factory to make new ships necessary to escape the planet before its destruction.

The novel’s timeframe is several years long; however, the expected death of the sun is still two generations away from Kyle and Kim’s generation. The saga features encounters with space pirates, interactions with a federation of planets, and a romance between Kyle and another Homer among its many subplots.

There are several issues with this story. First, the long timeframe makes it difficult to build character arcs and dilutes any urgency about the coming destruction. Second, although the author includes a key at the beginning that lists the species and their abilities, the sheer number of characters and species might easily overwhelm the reader. Third, several logic errors involving identities and narrators create confusion. Finally, numerous misspellings, inappropriate capitalization, and incorrect punctuation hinder comprehension and distract the reader.

For these reasons, I rate this 1 out of 5 stars, though its intended audience of teenagers may enjoy the elaborate world-building.

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The Inner World
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