Breakpoint: Nereis

The Plague Confederacy #1

by Alison Sinclair

The first of" The Plague Confederacy" series, "Breakpoint: Nereis" combines a rousing space opera with a first-rate medical mystery. Struggling to rebuild an empire shattered by plague, the starship, Waiora, recontacts the colony of Nereis, only to find themselves embroiled in war. The mandate of First Contact is to help stabilize devastated colonies while searching for the origins of the plague that brought down the empire. But the new Confederacy has struggles of its owns and it is ill-equipped to play peacemaker. Passions run high as deceit and trickery threaten to destroy them all.

Genres: Science Fiction

300 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2014

About the author

Alison Sinclair is a science fiction and fantasy author.

Reviews

[Nat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A science fiction story that read like a thriller. The premise was interesting a civilization is nearly wiped out by plague and is now reconnecting with lost planets. The denseness of the lore really weighed it down at times.Still the intrigue hooked me in.

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

Breakpoint: Nereis is a fairly hard sci fi story dealing with politics and medical drama. Although decently written, it is also extremely dense and, at the beginning, nearly impossible to keep characters and plot points distinguished. There are a wide array of characters, each with varying agendas, and yet unfortunately they can feel very cookie cutter due to having all the same level of intelligence. I think to make a book like this really work, characters really need to SHOW that they are from different colonies and mindsets, rather than the reader just being told. As well, the medical details were a bit mind numbing - there's definitely no CSI dumbing down of the terms but at the same time, it makes for an eye watering read that pulls the reader out of the story.

Plot: The human race has been devastated by a mysterious plague, the origins of which are unknown and only a few colonies survived with enough of their technology/knowledge intact to continue to jump space. The Waiora is a ship launched to track down the heart of the plague by landing on centuries-lost colonies and exhuming original plague victims. But what the crew finds is a colony planet at war with itself and they will have to walk a fine line between both warring sides, in a minefield of political machinations and betrayal. Including from their own ranks.

I don't shy away from big concepts or big words, but I have to admit I was stumbling with this book. E.g., characters calmly say lines like, "Nereian systemic amyloidosis with or without fibrosis. It results from deposition of foreign protein, incorporation of variant amino acids into native protein, and toxic metabolic effects" or "Central retroperitoneal hermatoma in a traumatic abdomen? Explore or not?....Yes, after gaining vascular control of the aorta.....Control where? Hemidiaphragm....Flank hematoma?" At times, I felt like I was sitting in on a medical seminal conference room and it wasn't a fun place to be.

Oddly enough, this reminded me of a lot of the 1970s Japanese manga sci fi with decent but fairly innocent and simple but advanced people dropped into more savage and backwards colonies and have to survive. However, in this case, the colonies, despite the deprivations from losing nearly all their tech and 90% of the population (and living in isolation for a century) seem to be just as advanced intellectually. They used big words/concepts too, despite being slaves. It took away a bit of the authenticity for me. I'm fairly well read and yet I was grabbing the online dictionary far too often.

I think the biggest problem I had, though, was the cover of this book. It is representative of the story but really brings down the feel so as to be more like a fanfiction. My respects to the artist (I certainly couldn't do better) but it isn't doing this book any service.

So, although not a terrible book, it wasn't an easy read, either. That makes it a solid 3 stars for me.

Reviewed from an ARC.

[Kay Cheung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this 5 stars for concept and originality and 2 stars for execution. So call it 3 and a half. I spent a lot of time wishing to shake Ms Sinclair, or maybe just strangle her, for not producing the sci fi classic this should have been.

The basis of the plot is that an interstellar civilisation, destroyed by a plague, is now re-contacting cut-off planets. A team of medical doctors has arrived on the planet Nereis to research the source of the plague. The team members divide themselves between two Nereian peoples, but there is a politico-military struggle in progress. One side had been forced to move in on the lands of the Kayani because of a failure of their adaptation to the native toxins. The Kayani are fighting back. Then there is another landless people who have been enslaved by the Kayani, but want self-determination (I think). Just to further complicate matters, some of the members of the medical team have their own agenda.

There's some really interesting science and pseudo science in here, such as the adaptations people have been given to allow them to live on different planets, and the effect of their environment on their health and longevity. The medical team have some great tech, as well, such as skin reinforcement (integ), a mental communications network, and a prosthetic hand which is also a surgical kit.

What I really struggled with is the way characters speak (and think) in such a roundabout manner, alluding to the point rather than stating it outright, that I had to read things over two or three times, just to work out what they meant. After a while I gave up and tried to read it straight through, but then I couldn't grasp the characters' motivations and just lost track of why things were happening. It would have been okay if the story had been simpler and stayed in a single point of view, but this novel has a large cast of characters and several sub-plots, so the lack of clarity over why people were doing things totally mucked me up.

To quote one of her characters: "No matter how great a man's native gifts, they are useless if he cannot communicate." I suspect this has been said of Ms Sinclair, and, regretfully, it's still valid. There is genius in this book, but finding it is just too hard a slog.

I originally gave this 3 stars, but decided to up it to 4, solely on the basis of the bizarre sex scene featuring a one-armed paraplegic. Yes, really. Read it and see.

[Nicole Luiken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool premise: decades after a plague devastates the colony worlds, a medical team is sent to make re-contact. But the planet Nereis is torn by civil conflict between one cultural group that believes in Obligation/indenturing/slavery and one that doesn't. By charter the medical team must be neutral, but that's much easier to do in theory than in practice...
Quibble: Each of the three sides has their own set of characters with multiple POV. Since I only connected with about four of the POV characters, I found the other sections slower going.

[Eric Desmarais · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows a style and feel of a political thriller. The shear quantity of characters, plots, and cultures is daunting.

Once I processed everything I truly enjoyed the plot and some of the characters.

[Stacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the setting and the plot, but I never really connected emotionally with any of the characters.