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Commanding the Red Lotus
Money Can't Buy Respect Sayuri Arai, privileged daughter of a corporate mogul, abandons a promising career to find her own path. She invests in a broken-down asteroid mining ship and steps in as the commander of its crew. Every day presents a new challenge just to keep her ship from falling apart and the bitter crew from killing each other. Can Sayuri unite the feuding factions, or will her rivals turn the entire complement against her? Commanding the Red Lotus offers a classic sense of wonder for today's science fiction readers. Volume one of the Red Lotus Stories, now in softcover for the first time. Commanding the Red lotus includes the previously released ebook novelettes: Fate of the Red Lotus Red Lotus: Innocence Lost Plus the brand-new novella Mutiny on the Red Lotus
236 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2016
About the author
R.J. Sullivan
19 books39 followersR. J. Sullivan and his family live in Heartland Crossing, Indiana, south of Indianapolis. R. J. Sullivan’s novel Haunting Blue is an edgy paranormal thriller and the first book of the adventures of punk girl Fiona “Blue” Shaefer and her boyfriend Chip Farren. Seventh Star Press released Haunting Obsession, a Rebecca Burton Novella, in 2012 and Virtual Blue, the second book in Fiona’s tale, in 2013. Seventh Star will release a new edition of Haunting Blue in early 2014. R. J.’s short stories have been featured in such acclaimed collections as Dark Faith Invocations by Apex Books and Vampires Don’t Sparkle. His newest project is the Red Lotus series of science fiction novelettes for readers of all ages.
R.J. resides with his family in Heartland Crossing, Indiana. He drinks regularly from a Little Mermaid coffee mug and is man enough to admit it. Check in at www.rjsullivanfiction.com to learn the latest about the projects of R. J. Sullivan.
R.J. resides with his family in Heartland Crossing, Indiana. He drinks regularly from a Little Mermaid coffee mug and is man enough to admit it. Check in at www.rjsullivanfiction.com to learn the latest about the projects of R. J. Sullivan.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 22, 2021
Solid writing. Characters had personality and flaws that made them interesting to follow, plot and pacing flowed well. Will read more by this author.
February 19, 2017
* NOTE : This book was received for review from a member of the press that publishes the book. It does not in any way affect my thoughts on the novel. Anything posted here is of my own personal opinion. *
First off , let me rave about the cover. The cover is GORGEOUS. It's something I'm really happy to have in my ebook library that I can just stare at and rave about when I'm bored.
Ok , so this was the typical sci-fi book , but I just loved the world and the storyline so much that I couldn't put it down. Everything somehow just clicked and I ended up loving all the characters and events that happened in it. However , I do wish it were slightly different from the typical sci-fi story. This doesn't affect my overall opinion though! Still an awesome read! Can't wait for book 2!
Signing off,
Promisary
First off , let me rave about the cover. The cover is GORGEOUS. It's something I'm really happy to have in my ebook library that I can just stare at and rave about when I'm bored.
Ok , so this was the typical sci-fi book , but I just loved the world and the storyline so much that I couldn't put it down. Everything somehow just clicked and I ended up loving all the characters and events that happened in it. However , I do wish it were slightly different from the typical sci-fi story. This doesn't affect my overall opinion though! Still an awesome read! Can't wait for book 2!
Signing off,
Promisary
January 11, 2017
***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY***
Not so much a novel as a collection of three novellas, Commanding the Red Lotus is your standard sci-fi space story. Unfortunately, because these novellas are collected together in this way, it feels like an attempt to string them together to make a novel. If this were a novel, it should have started with the third novella and expounded from there. After all, most of the backstory was mentioned or alluded to in this third story, so more pages could have been spent exploring the dynamic of the spacecraft crew. As it stands, there were a lot of characters mentioned that I couldn’t tell you a thing about.
When it comes right down to it, I have two issues with this book. The first is the main character. I feel the main character should have been the pirate captain, mainly because she had such an interesting backstory and an entertaining personality. Instead, the reader is stuck with rich girl Sayuri Arai. I would have much rather Sayuri been a highly educated woman who knew how to run a ship, but kept finding that the realities of doing so were not covered in any textbook. As it stands, Sayuri is just annoyingly incompetent and seems to just get by on sheer luck.
Secondly, the choice of making the eponymous vessel a mining ship, and an extremely aged and practically out-of-service one at that, I felt was misguided. The blurb on the cover compared these stories to Firefly, and I could see where the comparisons would be made. However, in these moments, the stories felt just like any other cliché sci-fi story. If you took away the outer space aspect to this story, it would just be about a mining vessel. I don’t know if I would pick up a book like that, since it sounds pretty boring (ha ha). Consequently, the size of the crew seemed too big to really get to know each of their characters. The ones we do meet don’t seem to use much logic either, but maybe that’s because of their Commander.
An OK collection of sci-fi novellas with lots of illogical characters, I give Commanding the Red Lotus 2.5 stars out of 5.
For more reviews of books and movies like this, please visit www.benjamin-m-weilert.com
Not so much a novel as a collection of three novellas, Commanding the Red Lotus is your standard sci-fi space story. Unfortunately, because these novellas are collected together in this way, it feels like an attempt to string them together to make a novel. If this were a novel, it should have started with the third novella and expounded from there. After all, most of the backstory was mentioned or alluded to in this third story, so more pages could have been spent exploring the dynamic of the spacecraft crew. As it stands, there were a lot of characters mentioned that I couldn’t tell you a thing about.
When it comes right down to it, I have two issues with this book. The first is the main character. I feel the main character should have been the pirate captain, mainly because she had such an interesting backstory and an entertaining personality. Instead, the reader is stuck with rich girl Sayuri Arai. I would have much rather Sayuri been a highly educated woman who knew how to run a ship, but kept finding that the realities of doing so were not covered in any textbook. As it stands, Sayuri is just annoyingly incompetent and seems to just get by on sheer luck.
Secondly, the choice of making the eponymous vessel a mining ship, and an extremely aged and practically out-of-service one at that, I felt was misguided. The blurb on the cover compared these stories to Firefly, and I could see where the comparisons would be made. However, in these moments, the stories felt just like any other cliché sci-fi story. If you took away the outer space aspect to this story, it would just be about a mining vessel. I don’t know if I would pick up a book like that, since it sounds pretty boring (ha ha). Consequently, the size of the crew seemed too big to really get to know each of their characters. The ones we do meet don’t seem to use much logic either, but maybe that’s because of their Commander.
An OK collection of sci-fi novellas with lots of illogical characters, I give Commanding the Red Lotus 2.5 stars out of 5.
For more reviews of books and movies like this, please visit www.benjamin-m-weilert.com
June 5, 2016
What keeps me coming back to R.J. Sullivan is that he's always able to write characters that are enjoyable and a real. This is the first book I read of his in his Red Lotus series as I enjoyed his supernatural books immensely, this book did not disappoint! I enjoyed reading it from start to finish, I loved watching Co-Commander Arai grow into a person that was a strong leader and she wasn't the only person to grow either, the entire crew of the Red Lotus did as well and I think that element help make the book great. Overall I really enjoyed reading this and can't wait for more adventures with the Red Lotus family.
September 20, 2016
Sayuri was a great character. R.J. Did a great job of introducing a little Japanese culture to his space opera. Conflict is at the root of great fiction and The Red Lotus has plenty of conflict to keep the story interesting. The Red Lotus is a fun read and is very well written.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews