Rifts Sonic Boom

Rifts #1

by Adam Chilson

The fabric of space and time is torn asunder and the Earth becomes a nexus - a stepping stone - to countless alien worlds. 300 years later, humankind struggles against inhuman invaders and dark magic from the Rifts. Alien beings from other dimensions, known as "D-Bees" share our planet, as do monsters and supernatural horrors. Earth has become an alien world unto itself. A place awash by an ever shifting tide of magic, madness and chaos. Magic and technology collide, and treachery and revenge reign in the age old battle between the forces of good and evil. The only problem is telling which is which. Rifts Sonic Boom brings to life the fantastic world of the popular Rifts Role-Playing Game in the first book of an epic trilogy. Science-fantasy as only Palladium Books can do it.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Nadienne Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've owned these these novels forever, as I am a HUGE fan of the Rifts RPG megaverse from Palladium Books.

I've attempted to read this first book numerous times throughout my life, and only now did I actually sit down and finally finish it. And yes, I will be proceeding to books two and three. It's...okay.

The author clearly has an understanding of the Rifts RPG, and did make an attempt to incorporate as many elements of said setting as possible without going too overboard. However, the writing itself is rather choppy, the editing is absolutely atrocious, and it is often difficult to follow which character is who and who is doing what. The dialogue is also very juvenile from time to time (which I can't tell is because the characters themselves are juvenile, or if its the writer - however, even highly sophisticated characters do not act as such, so I lean towards a juvenile writer).

However, the story is pretty decent, and I am curious to see what happens in Books two and or three.

If you aren't familiar with the Rifts RPG, I'm not sure I would recommend it. It does seem to require knowledge of the setting to truly understand.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally I find books that are written based on a game not so great, but this SiFi trilogy was the exception. These were great reads, fast paced and interesting, good characters and story line. Very recommended

[Hyann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A generous 3 stars. First you need to get pass misspelling, missing words.. the book didn't look like it was seriously edited. Plus, binding not glued correctly and not even the same papers were used to make the book. It's a more of a dream than a book but at least it got published.

Didn't really known the Rift world before reading this novel, always thought it was a dark mix of Shadowrun & Battletech. Rift is more or less depending the angle you want to see it. In resume, Rift is a futuristic world with rifts that open randomly bringing : magic, monsters, demons, aliens or anything you need to shoot at it with big guns.

So you got all military sci-fi cliché, sometime I got the impression that I was ready a dirty Robotech story. Basically, the story is just one army trying to catch the rebel in the enemy territory, they shoot many monsters on the way until a showdown in a city.

It wouldn't be bad if it was just a lite sci-fi military fighting. It's just the author try to put too much stuff in the book. Really look like he opened the RPG book and try to fit all thing that could happen in Rift: So you have human, cybord, battlearmor, mindcontroller, empath, dragon, elemental, sorcerer, invisible giant, techno-wizard, torturer rapist vilains, demons, magic, guns... so much that we don't really care anymore, you just turning page after page...

Even if I don't really recommend the book, I enjoyed it for it's simplicity and probably read the second book in the trilogy since I already have him.
Sonic Boom is like an old Chuck Norris movie: you know acting sucks, plot is ridiculous and that you have big explosions somewhere in the movie. But even knowing that you still watch it... you will have the same feeling with this book... won't find anything great but you will read through it anyway and putting aside telling you that you could have read a better book. Accept you will never admit that once in a while this style is good like any classic junk food.

[Gene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, that really was the worst edited book I've ever read. Ever. So I had to do a little digging to find out why Palladium would have let that slip through, it's not like they are new to the publishing world. The story I found was that they sent the wrong file to the publisher. Instead of the final draft, they sent one of the earlier drafts. Oops.

That aside, it was an ok book. I'm really trying to understand why the author decided to tell the story from the coalitions point of view. As I remember the game, they were the bad guys.

First chapter - excellent - good ole Coalition vs. rebels vs Deebees. Next few chapters; coalition soldiers on leave and screwing around. Yawn. Then they get out on the mission. like I said; I didn't really care for the coalition soldiers being the protagonist - they weren't really that interesting as characters. Then we had all kinds of little side characters introduced that really had no impact on the story, i.e. the dragon.

The Rebel villain; what was up with him? At first I got the calm martial artist warrior vibe from him, then the psychotic torturing bad guy.....He didn't really mesh through the story.

It's an okay book, but what really saves it is the setting. You can't really go wrong with the Rifts setting. It's a lot of fun. I'm hoping the next book is a little better. The seem to be setting it up that the soldiers realize that they are the bad guys, and might be defecting.

[Michael T Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Except for a bit of a confusing mess for a third act, I really enjoyed this book. Here's why: This book reads more like fanfiction than something professional. God-awful editing (they refuse to learn the word 'duel.' A Cyber-Knight [every class is always capitalized!] keeps challenging people to duals), weird pacing/tone (it starts with like four chapters that read like the first draft of a terrible '80s romcom, then ends with torture-porn level grotesquerie), and a propensity for referring to people by first/last name so randomly that I never knew how many characters there were.

It's all so utterly charming, until the last few chapters, which are just so frenetic they're baffling. This is our Eastwood-level climax, dammit, where we're going to save the town from the evil gang! But hell if I knew what was going on at any minute, and even if there were deaths, I'd be clueless as to who they were.

I got a strong Warhammer vibe at times because our main characters are mostly Coalition, and it becomes clear that they're all a bunch of parochial, speciesist weirdos, except for all the exceptions they allow. They're as hypocritical as anyone else, though they generally do less torture.

I eagerly await digging in to book two.

[Mark Katerberg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrendously bad.

CW: rape, graphic violence, misogyny, drugs, pretty much everything else

Full of typos that make the book nearly unreadable, this novel serves as a flash intro to the various OCCs of Rifts. You don’t get enough to know any of them, and every character is paper thin.

I really just wish the amazing world were served by a worthwhile novel, but even the action scenes were boring. This is garbage and would be only “bad” if it were 1/3 the length. It’s a painful slog with no benefit.

[Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know. It is cool reading a story set in the Rifts universe, but even as the first in a series this was a slow start. The action sequences are drawn out, and although the characters are good nothing was hinted at concerning the larger plot. I am probably going to give the follow up a shot to see where it goes sometime, but it is not pressing.

[E.S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I know this book has received a slew of bad press and reviews in the past, and I can certainly understand why. It is absolutely riddled with typographical errors, spelling mistakes, and minor inconsistencies that make it pretty difficult to get through for folks who notice those things.

It should also, by now, be know that there was some sort of mix-up in which file was sent to the printer, resulting in the aforementioned errors. And while this was certainly a terrible error that does nothing at all to help this book from an unknown author, and a publisher better known for their role playing games, it should certainly be taken into account when giving this book a look.

That said, the story is really interesting, and told in a sort of light-hearted way that really drew me in. The characters are interesting, easy to form a bond with, and do not, typically, behave in ways contrary to my understanding of the human psyche.

Adam has done a great job of capturing the essence of the various character types in the RPG, and plays them all off convincingly, even the dragon hatchling who has fun no matter what is going on around him.

With an epic mix of science fiction, swords, and sorcery, it is, in my opinion, worth a read. If you can get past the horrendous editing in the published version.

[Taddow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have fond memories of the Rifts setting from my high school RPG days and while I still play RPGs, the setting for Rifts has some issues that no longer make it for me and my gaming group a viable setting. I still find parts of the fluff quite enjoyable and sometimes even flip through some of my Rifts game books. I think that this nostalgia leaves me craving some type of Rifts story and there is not much of it. This was the main reason why I was interested in reading this book. I won't bring up the printing/writing errors already discussed by others, but will admit that the story feels a little hampered down at times by a variety of seemingly unimportant filling text (perhaps it will be relevant in the later books)and I don't like the transition (or lack thereof) back and forth between narratives of the opposing sides. Suffice to say that I still enjoyed the "Rift-ness" feel of the story with many of the various character classes showcased and the atmosphere of the dire straits that humanity finds itself in.

[Nicholas Hansen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good characters, interesting story, but God there was terrible editing done here. And I'm not talking minor grammatical snafoos, no, I'm talking about some sentences missing first words. It looked like this.(. went away from the robot.) How do you make that mistake? If the writer had scrolled through his document that spot would have been underlined by spell check. Oh, and my favorite mistake, which proves that this book was written with a word perfect program, was this. (dRifted) This word appeared twice and is the result of not selecting the find whole word box in word perfect's word serch/word replace. At some point the editor or the writer decided they wanted the word Rift to be capitalized throughout the whole document, but didn't bother to read through the document one final time to make sure they didn't screw it up.

So, fun story and techno wizards kick ass, but by in far the worst editing I have ever come across.

[Pharc3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you loved playing Rift as much as I did you'll love this series. Even with the HORRENDOUS editing job. Plot twists, engaging character development, and even a hint of realism (I mean even loved/main characters die).

[Miss Scarlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is full of typos but that's part of it's charm, I think. There are several parts in here that drag on, but if you play Rifts, then you're sure to like this book.