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Kon-Tiki Quartet #2
Parasites
Humankind has at last sent a ship to the stars, leaving an Earth ravaged by environmental disaster and torn apart by competing sectarian interests.
Kat Manning is one of eighteen specialists aboard the starship Kon-Tiki, clones whose various areas of expertise will be crucial in the months and years ahead as they forge a new life on a strange alien world.
But what Kat finds on Newhaven is nothing she could have planned for, and every bit as surprising and challenging as the issues she left behind on Earth: mysterious aliens, political in-fighting, and someone willing to go to any lengths to keep a deadly secret.
In Parasites, the second volume of the Kon-Tiki Quartet, Brown and Brooke tell the story of humankind’s taming of an alien world – and of confrontation with the demons that lurk within the very psyche of humanity itself.
Kat Manning is one of eighteen specialists aboard the starship Kon-Tiki, clones whose various areas of expertise will be crucial in the months and years ahead as they forge a new life on a strange alien world.
But what Kat finds on Newhaven is nothing she could have planned for, and every bit as surprising and challenging as the issues she left behind on Earth: mysterious aliens, political in-fighting, and someone willing to go to any lengths to keep a deadly secret.
In Parasites, the second volume of the Kon-Tiki Quartet, Brown and Brooke tell the story of humankind’s taming of an alien world – and of confrontation with the demons that lurk within the very psyche of humanity itself.
77 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2018
8 people want to read
About the author
Eric Brown
378 books186 followersEric Brown was a British science fiction author and Guardian critic.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 10, 2018
Eric Brown has been one of my dependable go-to authors for a number of years. Having now read “Kon-tiki Quartet Book 2”, my faith in Mr. Brown as an author is in real jeopardy. I can’t completely blame his co-author Keith Brooke, as Mr. Brooke has been shown to be a capable author in my past readings. Perhaps when the two get together something not good happens. Like trying to mix oil and water.
Although “Kon-tiki Quartet Book 2” was a smidgen better than the previous, book 1 in the series, this installment is dumpster ready or should be stacked with the kindling for the fireplace. With the promise of a space adventure involving a new planet and new technology being teased to the unsuspecting reader, we are handed a poorly written ‘soap opera’ containing stilted dialog and a re-tread of the previous book.
The premise of the series concerns a group of ‘clones’ consisting of earths top scientists, gathered together in an intergalactic space ship (the Kon-tiki), launched from a failing planet earth, heavily polluted and resource poor, to find a new planet to colonize. The trip is to take twenty five years, so the clones, along with five thousand human passengers, are placed in suspended animation until their arrival to the new destination. As far as a books’ premise goes, it’s not too bad, if not especially original.
The point of view characters are a psychologist, the human representation in book one, the clone of the human in book two. And two men who vie for her attention, human in book one, and data printed representations in book two. Because as fate would have it, advances in science (contradicting the resource poor earth theory from book one) have caused a set of characters to reach Kon-Tiki’s destination ten years ahead of the ships scheduled arrival. Among the data representations first arrivals are, of course, the two men who battled over our psychologist heroine.
Bad dialog and even worse plotting mar this totally unbelievable scenario. Having said that, book 2 is slightly better than book 1. It saddens me to say that the opportunities of books three and four will never be afforded my reading purview.
It’s sad to lose a much loved author after such a long and successful voyage through the hundreds and hundreds of pages journeyed together.
This hardcover is numbered 86 of 100 limited copies produced and is signed by both Eric Brown and Keith Brooke .
Although “Kon-tiki Quartet Book 2” was a smidgen better than the previous, book 1 in the series, this installment is dumpster ready or should be stacked with the kindling for the fireplace. With the promise of a space adventure involving a new planet and new technology being teased to the unsuspecting reader, we are handed a poorly written ‘soap opera’ containing stilted dialog and a re-tread of the previous book.
The premise of the series concerns a group of ‘clones’ consisting of earths top scientists, gathered together in an intergalactic space ship (the Kon-tiki), launched from a failing planet earth, heavily polluted and resource poor, to find a new planet to colonize. The trip is to take twenty five years, so the clones, along with five thousand human passengers, are placed in suspended animation until their arrival to the new destination. As far as a books’ premise goes, it’s not too bad, if not especially original.
The point of view characters are a psychologist, the human representation in book one, the clone of the human in book two. And two men who vie for her attention, human in book one, and data printed representations in book two. Because as fate would have it, advances in science (contradicting the resource poor earth theory from book one) have caused a set of characters to reach Kon-Tiki’s destination ten years ahead of the ships scheduled arrival. Among the data representations first arrivals are, of course, the two men who battled over our psychologist heroine.
Bad dialog and even worse plotting mar this totally unbelievable scenario. Having said that, book 2 is slightly better than book 1. It saddens me to say that the opportunities of books three and four will never be afforded my reading purview.
It’s sad to lose a much loved author after such a long and successful voyage through the hundreds and hundreds of pages journeyed together.
This hardcover is numbered 86 of 100 limited copies produced and is signed by both Eric Brown and Keith Brooke .
September 1, 2018
A slight improvement over book one, probably because this time it's set on an alien planet, but it still didn't really grab my attention. It seems that in this very character-focused story the world building has suffered a bit. Sure, there are some interesting elements surrounding the alien flora and fauna but I still I wasn't busting to get through it. It's really only because it's a short read that I persisted with it. I probably will keep on with the next novella in this quartet in the hopes that it will pick up, as I hope it does, especially since it is co-authored by one my all-time favourites.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews