Meridian

Worlds Apart #1

by James Wittenbach

Neo-retro-futuristic novel

Genres: Science Fiction

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Aphrael · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. I liked the characters and the premise of an expanded universe where communication was just, but somehow didn't get super deep into it.

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Space opera as it should be written. This Star Trek five-year mission lookalike started a little slow (think about those lighting-the-ship scenes in the movies), with more set-up than seemed called for. But once the conflict got moving, it didn't stop. One upside to all that set-up was that the characters were fully fleshed and interacting well by then. The book was very hard to put down and kept me up later than I'd planned.

The downside is that this book needs a proofreader. Badly. Not to mention a bit of spellchecking; in the first few pages, the stars were "billiant." Right. I nearly stopped reading right then. Glad I didn't, the story was well worth the effort, but it was a near-run thing. Normally I'd shrug this off, but the author made an effort to rework the English language to reflect some hundreds of years of change, and sometimes it was hard to tell what was deliberate fun on his part and what was a mistake. And more than once I had to stop and sort out what a sentence was trying to say.

Again, the story's worth some effort. It's a good read. But it would be a far better read with some clean-up. Let's call this one four stars. If the author releases a new edition, we'll revisit this review.

This book was brought to my attention by one of my favorite blogs, the Ace of Spades HQ.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit more than 2 stars. Lots of elements and potential, but not developed where I'd have liked it. Series premise: Humans colonized the galaxy 1000s of years ago, but this planet hasn't heard from anyone else for centuries. They build & send out starships to investigate. Book premise: First visited planet has megacities/enclaves with a sort-of demented hive system. Book ends sort of as military SF. Meanwhile, the starship has also had to deal with an emergent AI-type situation which complicates things for a bit, then disappears, then reappears seemingly making nice ... but one won't really know unless they read more of the series.

The series will leave something to be desired if each book involves a planet affected by the same cause. But if each planet in the galaxy had more-or-less simultaneously gone silent for different reasons, that might strain credibility. If you're looking for some adventure not requiring too much thinking, with some scenes with varied characters, you may rate it higher than me. If you're hoping for more SF concept development, you may feel some disappointment, too.