Redemption

by Rob Douglas

Polly Hawkins has been Prime Minister for four years when she is faced with her biggest challenge. A spaceship arrives from another solar system. To everyone’s astonishment, its crew is human. They bring news about mankind’s origins and about threats to mankind. Polly has to manage working with her visitors as well as with her fellow heads of government as it becomes clear that the visitors are not the first to show an interest in the planet.

186 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 14, 2019

About the author

Rob Douglas is a pastor, based in Perth, Western Australia. He is formerly a journalist, newspaper editor and community services manager. Rob is a storyteller who likes to bring people into his world, and at the same time bring life to stories from the Bible.

Reviews

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, a good realism x SF crossover

I was a bit worried going into this that it would all be anti-American from when the spaceship landed in Hyde Park. It managed not to get too political

I have given it 4 stars because the book was written well, and the message although cringey and omnipresent didn’t really (as strange as it may seem) seem too structural damage He could have easily written a full 360 page novel on this, but I’m glad he didn’t - it would have felt too forced and more heavy SF, as opposed to a more thoughtful, deeper read.

And in a way it did manage to be this. It wasn’t like a lot of Sci-fi I’ve read where it tries to push a message, but epically fails and manages just to be an ink notebook. This genuinely managed to go beyond the paper, and put across some interesting ideas. I said that it was a Speculative Fiction and realism crossover, which obviously is a slight oxymoron, but it genuinely felt like that, not in any way unrealistic, he managed to move the book on at a reasonable pace, the events not seeming surreal. The one problem here was the lame attempt at an alien x prime minister romance subplot. It was poorly executed, stupid in its idea, and better suited to a pornographic fantasy novel.

Some of the sentences, and dialogue are a little clunky; that is too be expected - I have not read a single independently published book that has not suffered the same problem, and I can get behind it: I’ve learnt not to let it affect me much (although I have gone straight from a really thought provoking, hard-hitting, almost prosaic book, so I was hit slightly hard, but this was better than some. Exposition is very hard to get right, but this managed too without breaking the fourth wall, and seeming like the author is talking to you (I’ve seen my fair few of those!)

Again the whole moral of the story was very shaky, for starters the book didn’t revolve around the theme (saving the planet, and nature and shit), instead the theme felt like it was made to fit the plot - whether or not this was actually the case, I don’t know. I wonder whether he went in trying to write a sweeping galaxy wide epic, which was a super-metaphor in disguise about how it is important to save the planet - it’s the only one we’ve got (except it clearly isn’t because the reader is told about how Mars has been terraformed; colonies established on an asteroid belt, and a fucking military base on the moon ¯\(ツ)/¯ . If ever there was a moral that was over-cliched……. But in a slightly strange way the theme was so badly executed that it could be ignored.



postscript!!

I have just read the authors biography and I am faintly surprised he’s a vicar, I am glad he managed not too get to religious, but I wonder whether the book would have been better suited to a more religious epic….idk…just a thought

[Kate Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't a bad book it was just a little too simple for my taste. I could see someone younger (maybe late elementary or middle school) absolutely loving this book! Again its not bad, just a little basic in terms of writing style and plot.

[Jan Vernee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read!