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Crude Space
Time after time humanity evolves to escape from the expanding reaches of extinction. The third planet from the yellow sun has long burned out as the human race claims strange new worlds in the galaxy. Seven Colonies of Man, known as The Nomical Order, reign supreme. Law is enforced by the Augustus Colony, home to the Capital Planet, Octavian.
The wars that ended mankind's time on their virgin planet echo through generations. There is tension within The Nomical Order. Deep within the Hadrian Colony resides a Planet made from nothing, known as StarMetro. Word spreads of a powerful psychic's prediction, the discovery of an ancient evil. Said to be a weapon to eradicate mankind, in the right hands it could bring about Pax Armata, man's last hope for peace.
Called in at the final hour, an elite team of Prometheans (PROs) boards their ship in an effort to maintain order. But even in their elite psychic ranks, imbalance finds itself, as a new recruit joins the unit.
The wars that ended mankind's time on their virgin planet echo through generations. There is tension within The Nomical Order. Deep within the Hadrian Colony resides a Planet made from nothing, known as StarMetro. Word spreads of a powerful psychic's prediction, the discovery of an ancient evil. Said to be a weapon to eradicate mankind, in the right hands it could bring about Pax Armata, man's last hope for peace.
Called in at the final hour, an elite team of Prometheans (PROs) boards their ship in an effort to maintain order. But even in their elite psychic ranks, imbalance finds itself, as a new recruit joins the unit.
79 pages, Hardcover
Published November 29, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 4, 2023
A novella with a solid premise and lots of interesting worldbuilding. Crude Space has a fairly simple plot, which is perfectly fine for a story of this length, and presents a lot of cool and intriguing concepts that can easily be built upon for follow up entries in this universe. The gist: a special ops team of psychics are tasked with investigating a rogue moon that somehow showed up in one of mankind's planetary systems by its own means. There's reason to believe this moon harbors something can affect the balance of political power, and when the team arrive things quickly get out of hand.
I like the technologies in this universe and got a little grin out of the name of the team's ship. The psychic powers are rather conventional, but the author shows that he has a mind for playing abilities with and against each other. This being said, the writing could use some polish. There are a number of areas where it is not immediately clear who's doing what. One chapter had a scene change without a proper transition. Identifying the speaker of any dialog is easy, but I feel there is an over reliance on dialog tags to convey action or tone. In general, there could be less telling of emotion and more showing. On the plus, I didn't notice any glaring typos or spelling errors. As for the characters, oddly enough, I felt the most connection with Code Yellow, who has the least screen time but the most relatable personality once we start getting some character reveals. We get much more time with Code Blue, but I felt I was missing a spark that would justify her connection with Code White. Code Black is intentionally aloof, so no problem there, and once we find out what's going on with him, I like his character a lot. The bad guy goes hard into cartoonish villainy by the climax. Take that as a pro or a con according to your preference.
With all of these critiques, you'll likely wonder why I'm giving Crude Space a 4 out of 5, and it's true I was planning on docking it down to a 3. The answer to this is the ending. Without spoiling, when I got to the last pages, I decided I couldn't rate this lower than a 4.
In all, I think this author has plenty of potential. Good creativity and solid story sense. I'm confident that with some sharpening of technique, he can go places.
I like the technologies in this universe and got a little grin out of the name of the team's ship. The psychic powers are rather conventional, but the author shows that he has a mind for playing abilities with and against each other. This being said, the writing could use some polish. There are a number of areas where it is not immediately clear who's doing what. One chapter had a scene change without a proper transition. Identifying the speaker of any dialog is easy, but I feel there is an over reliance on dialog tags to convey action or tone. In general, there could be less telling of emotion and more showing. On the plus, I didn't notice any glaring typos or spelling errors. As for the characters, oddly enough, I felt the most connection with Code Yellow, who has the least screen time but the most relatable personality once we start getting some character reveals. We get much more time with Code Blue, but I felt I was missing a spark that would justify her connection with Code White. Code Black is intentionally aloof, so no problem there, and once we find out what's going on with him, I like his character a lot. The bad guy goes hard into cartoonish villainy by the climax. Take that as a pro or a con according to your preference.
With all of these critiques, you'll likely wonder why I'm giving Crude Space a 4 out of 5, and it's true I was planning on docking it down to a 3. The answer to this is the ending. Without spoiling, when I got to the last pages, I decided I couldn't rate this lower than a 4.
In all, I think this author has plenty of potential. Good creativity and solid story sense. I'm confident that with some sharpening of technique, he can go places.
Displaying 1 of 1 review