Alpha Rising (Book) - 8/27/2012 5:21:06 PM
I am an avid science fiction fan and enjoy all the various sub-genres, however this retelling of the Noah’s Arc story did not do it for me. It is a noble effort by a first time author, but ultimately it falls short. If this story was targeted at middle school readers, except for a few words above their vocabulary level, this story would work. If it is targeted at adults, it is not enough.
Bach, the main character, comes off as stodgy and wooden. The pun on his name and the band Bachman Turner Overdrive never pays. The pun would have been better based on Grand Funk’s song Captain, My Captain. None of the other characters, with the possible exception of Star are developed beyond cardboard cutouts.
The story’s action is simplistic. There is a lot of it, but, like the characters, it lacks depth. Sometimes I felt like I was reading an evangelical tract. The pacing was erratic and even the parts that should have been exciting weren’t. Properly told, with adequate description, this story should have been triple its current length.
I have an issue with the gratuitous killing off of a potentially major character so early in the work. Other than to deliver her Bible, why was she even there? Given the military nature of much of the other writing in this genre, there is surprisingly little bloodshed so when a character dies, it stands out more.
As an environmentalist who includes environmental themes in my own fiction writings, I am sensitive to how this issue is handled. The gratuitous repetition of the word “toxic” was heavy handed and off-putting. The descriptions of each of the “worlds” visited was all “tell” and no “show”.
As other reviewers have commented, the text was free of the errors that so often plague self published works. The grammar was correct and the punctuation was perfect. There were no typos that I noticed.
I do not wish to discourage this writer from future works, however, before undertaking another such project, at least one work by each of the following authors should be read: Ann McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Elizabeth Moon, Ellen Rouiz, Holly Lilse, K. D. Wentworth, Linda Evans and Mercedes Lackey.
