Solaria

Solaria #1

by Fran Heckrotte

Lesbian Fiction: Futuristic Sci-Fi - The first awareness of existence was a chaotic flash of colors, meaningless and yet in an odd way logical; why, she wasn't sure. Birth is the most significant event in life, and yet it is never memorable; at least not for the newborn; but then she really wasn't a newborn, even though it was the first day of her life. She was 1A526, the first of her kind, an artificially intelligent blend of technology and bio-mechanics. Created to serve humans, Solaria and her AI programmer, Carley, soon discover the company funding the Hubot Project had more sinister motives. If Solaria were to fulfill the hopes of the woman who had given her existence meaning, she would have to become the human her programmer had dreamed of and take down Future Dynamicon, the company that created her. This product is an eBook on a memory card and can be read using the following reader apps or dedicated readers: eReader, Mobipocket, iSilo, Adobe, Kindle, and Sony all DRM free.

Genres: Lesbian, Science Fiction, Romance, Fiction

538 pages, ebook

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Fran Heckrotte is the recipient of the 2011 Alice B. Medal for "body of work."

From the author's website: So what's to tell? I live in the Sunny South of the USA. I own a small business, Orphan Homes Property Management. For leisure, I water garden, landscape, enjoy the beach and party with my friends whenever the time allows. Past careers: Steno-typist, cop, construction worker, real estate agent and more. Present and past experiences: gold-panning, flying, training five gaited horses, camping, scuba diving, water gardening, landscaping, carpentry and much, much more.

Reviews

[Trevor McGuire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been actively seeking more female sci-fi authors, specifically wanting to read books with strong female characters. This books fits the bill, but falls short in a number of other ways. To be fair, when I picked the book up, I didn't know it was in the class of lesbian sci-fi (I didn't know there was such a thing). I quickly learned what the flavor of the book was going to be, and just skimmed through the erotica. I was reminded of Stross with the random weird erotica thrown in throughout the book; I don't necessarily feel it took anything away, but it just didn't add anything for me.

The plot was fine for me; the Hubots could very well have been Vulcan, but the little bit of science thrown in from time to time was vague enough to be believable, which was fine for me. The bad guy embodied a number of stereotypes typically associated with men: misogyny, egotism, aggressiveness, etc. A villain with unlimited money is a little dry, but I got the point with him.

In the end, the book was fine; it wasn't boring enough to put down, but I also didn't stay up all night reading it. The characters were easy to follow, and the story progressed pretty steadily. My only real problem with the book was that I felt too much of the personality of the author coming through. The characters seemed too desperate; they felt to me like the author wrote them the way they were because she wanted to be them. That is just my personal feeling, but when I read a book where I get that feeling, it does leave a sour taste in my mouth.

[Morgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

First off, the world needs more lesbian sci fi literature! This book doesn't cut it. I gave up half way through, the plot is ridiculous and the "villain" is just so completely over the top. The cartoonishly awful dialogue gave me the uneasy feeling that I was going to find myself reading porn instead of a book. Who knows, maybe that's what happens in the last half. Too childish a book to keep my interest.

[Mirabelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not very deep, a good distraction.