S.H. Jucha

DNF at 25%

I tried. I really tried. I almost never DNF a book this early--and I rarely DNF books at all--but this one was only getting more and more frustrating. Unfortunately, this book suffers from many first-novel mistakes, but to an Nth degree. The hero is flawless, and everybody loves him--though we can't quite tell why, because he's so perfectly heroic and flawless that, as readers, we want him to be knocked off his pedestal. There's a lack of action and conflict, the characters are show more unfailingly polite to each other, and clear questions related to plot/motivation go entirely ignored. As frustratingly, so much is told vs. shown, with the really interesting moments being summarized rather than explored, that it feels like we're getting the cliffnotes of what might have been an interesting story, vs. being allowed to engage with it.

Most of the issues here are common enough first-novel issues, but when piled together into one book that suffers some from some serious flaws in plotting and characterization, they make for an incredibly difficult read. I hope that the writer employed a developmental editor and worked on improving his craft in future books, but I'm afraid I won't be trying another book by the author. show less

Alex Racine operates an asteroid tug boat, Outward Bound, in the asteroid belt of human colony system of New Terra. It's been over seven hundred years since their ancestors arrived fleeing a badly damaged Earth, and had a rough arrival that cost them many of their original colonists. It's been a hundred years since they recovered enough technology to get back into space. They've colonized another world in their system, and are exploiting the asteroid belt.

What they haven't had is any contact show more with Earth or anyone else since they arrived. It's quite a surprise when Racine sees an unfamiliar ship coming from, apparently, outside the system. This strange ship is badly damaged and doesn't respond to his radio calls, so he captures it with the tools he uses to capture asteroids, and investigates.

The Reveur is from Meridien, a human colony founded at about the same time as New Terra, but they didn't have the rough arrival of the New Terrans, and retained their technology, which has since advanced. They have, for instance, FTL drive, highly developed nanite technology, and real artificial intelligence. They have thriving colony worlds of their own.

The bad news is, the Reveur was attacked, at one of their colonies, by a completely unfamiliar ship, a sliver ovoid that didn't respond to any attempts at contact and did major damage with energy weapons unlike anything either Meridien or New Terra has. They were able to escape into FTL, but in an arbitrary direction and with major crew casualties. All the survivors are in stasis, while Juilien, the ship's SADE (Self Actualizing Digital Entity) controls the ship.

The New Terrans and the Meridiens, with very different cultures separated by seven centuries, face a major threat and need to come together to protect the only parts of the human race they can be sure still exist.

The first few pages aren't too compelling, as our introduction to Alex Racine is more than a bit Mary Sue-ish. He's really smart, he's really handsome, he invented an amazing new technique for getting asteroids to where they're needed while he was barely more than a kid. But then the story really starts, and things move along nicely. I very much liked the fact that neither New Terra nor Meridien is portrayed as a utopia or as obviously superior to the other. They both have real strengths and real weaknesses, and confronting the common enemy is going to depend on blending their resources, technology, and abilities together. The characters are individuals, too, good and bad, weak and strong, and there's a basic assumption that gender is just one more personal characteristic.

Overall, this is a well-written, enjoyable story. It is the first of a series, so there's more to come. While Hugo eligible for 2016, I wouldn't say it's award worthy--but I do hope to see more from Jucha. It's a promising start, and we can hope to see even better in the future.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. show less

The Méridiens of the ship Rêveur have returned to Confederation space with their new allies, the New Terrans, expecting to be welcomed delightedly after their long absence and presumed loss. Instead, they find that the same silver ships that nearly destroyed Rêveur have destroyed half the Confederation, and the surviving Méridiens have no plan except to flee, abandoning their long-settled worlds.

This plan does not sit well with the crew of Rêveur, neither her surviving Méridien crew show more nor her new captain, Alex Racine, and his fellow New Terrans. Having proven the silver ships can be fought, they want to take the fight to the enemy. To do that, though, they need help, resources and volunteers who will have to come from the Méridiens, who for the most part don't believe either that fighting can be effective, or that killing is ever justified.

But Confederation society has a dark secret--a whole prison colony of "independents," people unwilling to conform to peaceful, prosperous, but mostly quiescent Confederation society.

A whole planet of independent free thinkers.

This is good, old-fashioned, space adventure, with battles with aliens, ingenuity, derring-do, and culture clashes among the different societies--the Confederation culture of most Méridiens; the "independents" of Libre, and the new society that's forming on Rêveur, blending the customs and viewpoints of both New Terrans and Méridiens, constructing a new culture capable of fighting the threat to all humanity that the silver ships represent. There's lots of danger, challenges, on-the-fly can-do engineering...

What's different from "the good old stuff" is that Jucha is writing from the social assumptions and dynamics of the 2010s, not the 1950s. Or 1930s. Both smart characters and stupid ones, good and bad, come in both male and female, as well as the range of ethnic options represented in the populations of New Terra and the Confederation. in a way that feels natural and realistic.

It's just a good, solid, enjoyable story, with pretty good characters and world-building. Both have gotten stronger since the first book, The Silver Ships, although Alex Racine is still improbably capable. Overall, this is a lot of what I want when I wish for some of "the good old stuff," without the baggage that makes me hesitate to pick up a Golden Age old favorite for fear it won't be as good as remembered.

Recommended.

I bought this book. show less

The author sent me a copy of this book for review and I’m very pleased he did :-)

The silver ships is a space opera set 700 years into a future where mankind have destroyed the Earth and headed off to find pastures new. The story has everything you need from likeable main characters to a feel-good-that-things-work-out type mantra. Add in the mysterious destructive aliens and you get exactly what you want from this genre.

The book is clearly the foundation for an expansive story to come as a show more lot of time is spent building relationships and setting the scene. It feels like the universe within the story will start opening up with more and more “humans” to be found out there. One of the things I like is the use of realistic physics for space travel at the start as it provides a sense of realism and also provides some great opportunities for improvement as we’ve already seen… you’ll have to read it to find out what I mean.

I’m keen to get my hands on the next book already as the story is compelling and I can’t wait to see how things move on. It may sound cliche but the story has the foundations to become epic… well done Scott. show less