New Book Review 5: Rise of an Orphan

The fifth book I’m reviewing is Rise of an Orphan, the first book in the ‘Sky City’ series by R.D. Hale. The book defines itself as a biopunk epic (now there’s a genre you don’t hear about every day) and has overtones of science fiction, fantasy, and dystopian fiction. It was also voted winner of the Wattpad Award in 2014, so it’s had some publicity and popularity in the past.

The book is set in a future version of a parallel reality in which religious fanatics of the San Teria cult (I don’t practice Santeria, I ain’t got no crystal ball…) have taken over a Blade Runner-esque society and implemented a strict social order in which elites live in grand aerial cities while the poor scavenge for existence in disease-ridden slums. The hero, Arturo Basilides, is a teenager from the slums who gets caught up in a revolution against the San Teria government after he meets Dynah, a ‘transhuman’ girl whose body has been turned into a kind of supernatural weapon by government experimentation.

Robots! Superheroes! Ghosts! Cavemen! Sasquatches! Mutant monsters! Dystopian religious fanatics! Drugs ‘n’ sex ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll! This book shoves together the most diverse and random of tropes and tries to make them work together in a world that has echoes of various other fictional worlds but stands alone in its originality. There are old tropes in the book, certainly. Dynah, the lab-created superhuman, is much like the cast of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series or any number of characters from the literary tradition of comic books (she has a lot in common with Dark Phoenix of the X-Men comics, I noticed). Some descriptions of the divisions between the upper and lower stratums of the book’s society were very close to similar divisions in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series, and the mutant monsters which populate the book’s landscape could have been lifted from any number of sci-fi sources. This is not to say that these tropes are bad. They were used pretty effectively here. But, they are familiar tropes and they were used in familiar ways.

The story tries to do a lot and fit a lot together. Its storyline includes attempted revolution, failed romance, prison break, car racing, plague epidemics, and other elements. It’s undeniably fun, but the lack of cohesion does get to be an annoyance after a while, especially considering how long the book is (I read the ebook, but the print length is 439 pages). The book has a central plot, but along the way that plot is constantly delayed by the numerous side-plots. Some of the delays are great, but some of them completely stop the plot for long stretches (in one part Arturo and his sort-of girlfriend Myla go on a mission to Sky City and spend all of their time, and several dozen pages, exploring local entertainment and shopping).

Despite its lack of cohesion, the characters are engaging, the plot is interesting, the dialogue is witty, the action is entertaining, and the fictional world is quite spectacular. Fans of dystopian fiction, action fiction, and soft sci-fi/fantasy will enjoy it. Of the five books I’ve so far reviewed on this blog, The Rise of an Orphan is so far the best one.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.

New Book Review 2: Neosol: Maelstrom

The second book that I’m reviewing is Neosol: Maelstrom, the first of science fiction series ‘The Neosol Saga’ by Andrew Wales. Andrew and I were both students at Pacific Lutheran University, and he was a great help to me with understanding Amazon’s self-publishing process. We published our respective books within a week or so of each other, and I’m proud to give his work a review now.

Neosol: Maelstrom follows the life of a college student and mall cop named Jon Enger, who becomes an unwilling warrior in an extraterrestrial war against a race of evil lizard-people called The Brotherhood. The book draws extensively on the modern-day mythos of Ufology, with references to flying saucers, Grey and Nordic aliens, the “Roswell event”, international conspiracies and government cover-ups, and of course villainous shapeshifting Lizard People bent on galactic domination. The book’s main setting is Seattle, WA, a city both Andrew and I are quite familiar with. The fine details of the known real-world setting and the investigable alien background lends a degree of credibility which benefits the story greatly.

Jon Enger, our protagonist, has a storyline which has parallels to any number of superhero stories. Through events beyond his control (in this case, alien abduction), he develops abilities which turn him into an engine of total destruction, a Neosol soldier. The chaos and violence which stem from his abilities becomes a force he must learn to control, and the sudden pressure of being drafted to battle aliens becomes cause for a difficult double-life. Part of Jon’s crisis is keeping his life as a Neosol separate from his ordinary human life, and the narrative’s develop shows this to be impossible. Beyond the madness and mayhem of the alien warrior story is the story of a young man struggling to hold his life together. This struggle is conveyed in very human and very believable terms. Jon Enger is an action hero, but he is also a struggling college student. The balance between the two is struck very well.

I was particularly impressed with the book’s fight scenes. Each one is carefully plotted and choreographed. As far as I could tell, no details were overlooked. The violence was, however, quite over-the-top at times. When he gets going, Jon Enger fights like The Terminator or like a character from a video game. The fights are described with every burn, slash, and bullet wound included. Certain readers might be turned off by that, but for others it might be exactly what is desired in an action thriller.

Now, I know that Andrew has released two editions of this book, and the one I read was the first edition. The first edition had quite a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes (though they were mostly concentrated at the beginning and became fewer as the story progressed) and the sentences would have benefitted from being more concise. I know that he corrected many of the mistakes in the second edition, which I have not read and which I am giving him the benefit of the doubt on.

Fans of sci-fi action and conspiracy buffs will take a great deal of pleasure from this book. I enjoyed it, and I can imagine somebody from a more specific target audience enjoying it even more.

Now, the plug. If you liked this book review, you can see my others here:

New Book Review 1–New Book Review 2–New Book Review 3–New Book Review 4–

New Book Review 5–New Book Review 6–New Book Review 7– New Book Review 8

If you are a fan of fantasy, you can look into my own book, Tales of Cynings Volume I, in print format here or Kindle format here.