Eleven years ago, colonists from Earth made Galena their home.
It is a planet of wondrous and deadly mysteries. Survival means adaptation - yet there can be no adaptation to an ancient corruption festering deep beneath the soil. Something is waiting down there, altering the plants and wildlife, twisting them to fit its dark plan.
At the same time, progress has finally come to Galena. The dream of cities and superhighways suddenly becomes reality…and the only price is the total subjugation of the colonists who would build them.
Gavin Alder is torn between two battlefronts. The future of the colony is balanced on a knife’s edge, and he must choose to stay and fight or entrust himself to a power beyond all human knowledge…
…because the creature corrupting the soul of Galena might be the only thing that can save it.
Born in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Samuel grew up a mile from the gates of Kennedy Space Center. His grandmother built space shuttles, his father designed scientific equipment that flew on them, and Samuel watched the launches from his rattling front porch, dreaming of the stars.
His best-selling novel Mission One, a near-future first contact odyssey, is the book that launched his career as a science fiction writer.
He recently spent three years traveling the world with his wife. They welcomed their son near the end of that journey and are now spending their days exploring the United States while Samuel works on his next book.
Want FREE Sci-Fi stories? Head on over to http://sam-best.com for a free introduction to Samuel's work.
Surprised this book is rated as highly as it is…Plot felt rushed and convoluted, the big threat was solved too conveniently to be believable. Also, descriptions felt clunky, sometimes describing the same thing in 2 consecutive sentences. Finished it because I felt I had invested too much time already and wanted to know where the author was going…but felt pretty unsatisfied. Very disappointing after the promising start - “Another World” should have been a standalone novel.
After the first book, the second and third went downhill. This book seemed very rushed, plot points were very messy. Some elements just made no sense, things were made up then used. No buildup. Just accept it as magic. Characters became more and more unbelievable. Lots of needless deaths. The end was just.....bad.
I really wanted to love this but it was a chaotic mess.
It breaks my heart since I usually love the Author's work, but I just did not connect with book 3. I missed some of the previous characters and it never fully grabbed my attention I even ended up reading another book in between chapters. It is such a shame since I loved the previous 2 books.
The quality of this series seemed to decline the deeper I went. I prefer hard Science Fiction. Don't pull out the rabbit hat with every turn. Heinlein used the free energy hat trick but did not use it for every plot twist. Best should follow that example. Fantasy has few rules and Best doesn't follow enough for me. I will confine his work to the fantasy corner for now.
A good finish to the trilogy although I found the human villain to be over the top. He didn't have much exposure within the story either. The build up was good but I felt a little confused at the climax, probably because I thought the story jumped too much causing abrupt changes in the timeline that hadn't occurred in other parts of the story.
The series has been a lot of fun to read. I don't usually read science fiction this was really good from start to finish. Never thought of farming a distant planet, but when yours is starving you don't have much choice. With crash landings and outside interference these farmers have a hard time of it.
I have read and listened to this series, and I loved the storyline and characters, and the narration was great, I loved how I was hooked after the second book I read/listened the last book in a day, l also enjoyed the ending and I think any readers would
Read the whole series and enjoyed it. I found some of the details about the alien beings hard to follow but the story is suspenseful and drew me in so I kept reading.