Sarah Baethge

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com
‘From Elsewhere’ is a hard book to review because I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything like it. The premise is simple and not particularly original, but has promise. A human-like alien lands on earth. It’s familiar because it has been done many times before, and done well. Movies like ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and ‘Brother From Another Planet’ are classics because they use their alien protagonists to cast a different light on human society. Bringing an outsider’s view has enormous potential for both social commentary and comedy.

In ‘From Elsewhere’ the alien is being pursued by a different species of extraterrestrials, who are also indistinguishable from humans. It’s easy to see how a story about an alien fugitive on earth could be exciting and action packed. Imagine the drama that could unfold as his pursuers hunt for him. Imagine….

Now keep imagining, because ‘From Elsewhere’ contains none of the above. There’s no comedy, no social commentary and certainly no excitement. The absence of thrills isn’t even down to bad writing (although there is plenty of that). The writer just doesn’t bother to include any even remotely exciting events beyond the initial crash.

The plot is essentially this. Nysol (who is from the Sharill race of space pirates) is being chased by member of the Kisleem species. The Kisleem are the dominant race and the Sharill are in a kind of guerrilla rebellion against them. Nysol crash lands on Earth in a national park in the US. He meets Sean, a human who is camping there. Sean inexplicably mistakes Nysol for Kevin, an acquaintance of his. Nysol then uses an alien device to wipe Sean’s memory and take his knowledge for himself. The rest of the book is about the implications of that act and largely takes the form of people talking about it. Some of Sean’s friends and neighbours get involved, as does Poit, a Kisleem policeman who is chasing Nysol. A few other things happen, mostly to do with characters having their memories wiped or restored, but not many. Anything that does happen is discussed at length before it happens and then again after the fact. I’m not sure I’ve read a book where the ratio between things actually happening and people talking about them was weighted so heavily in favour of the talking. This might not be a problem if any of the characters were engaging or the dialogue was snappy. Sadly neither is true. Sentences in ‘From Elsewhere’ often run on unchecked, as if daring a full stop to try and put an end to them.

"“I have to object to your decision, also,” said Amy. “First you said that you were our friends, but now you’re basically picking and choosing which ones of us you want to keep imprisoned here; what are you going to do next, decide that some of us need to be iced just like you do to those Sharill who you call enemies, as well?”"

This absence of pace or tension infects the whole book. The characters never seem to care about the events on anything other than an intellectual level.

"“Making up stories just to have other people unknowingly fill in non-player character roles in your game is a pretty messed up thing to do; you really ought to leave everybody else out of this pointless make-believe! People who’ve never met you, like Amy here, are taking what you are making up v seriously. Please don’t try to take advantage of Sean’s momentary confusion, and stop lying to my neighbors to make them mad at me.”"

Even when the characters aren’t under stress their dialogue is weirdly robotic like they don’t really understand communication. If it was the alien characters who spoke like this I could understand it, but it’s all of them.

"“Ok,” Randall said to them all; “let’s go into the next room and play some playstation or something instead of continuing our D&D campaign since Sean isn’t here. I say right now that I’ll defeat you all in Call of Duty!”"

Despite the modern references, the book often feels like a bad pulp SF offering from the 1950s, or maybe a lost offering from Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional SF author Kilgore Trout. Taken in that way it’s kind of fascinating. I found myself almost eager to keep reading it because I had absolutely no idea where it was going. Sadly it wasn’t anywhere interesting.

… (more)

I pushed myself again to read and review a SciFi/fantasy book. In Panoptemitry the story starts at a planet far away, used as a kind of prison for males. Only one female is kept too, Emilija Lithuan. Will she be able to set herself free? Then she will have to defeat the all knowing, ubiquitous computer network S.Y.M.A.C., unravel the truths and lies of her fellows and discover the deeper machinations of the Caytalan Church doctrines, rituals and rites of passage. Meet morphing androids, a kind of talking kangaroos, travel faster than anyone did before and reach unkown worlds.
The tension between science and religion and the abuse of both instruments to suppress people is a main theme. Of course morality comes into play when one woman faces so many men, a godhead starts warning and advising. Reading the ebook was difficult due to the strange formatting (normal, italic, bold in the mix), the constant flow of fantasy names and language. The final chapters seem to be written in a rush to get the rescue done without any real (character) developments.
So check upfront, for example by reading a free sample, to check whether this is your cup of tea.… (more)

Thanks to the author, Sarah Baethge, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really like the overall story of this book. A werewolf who works as a computer teacher and an evil masked/illegal corporation that hunts down werewolves for experiments. Sounds cool! Unfortunately the execution wasn’t great.

A few of the obvious problems were just due to a lack of editing. I noticed some spelling and grammatical errors, and the book had too much formatting (a lot of italicized sentences and words, but I had no idea why they were italicized).

Besides that, I felt that the story moved too quickly. Not enough time was spent in action or developing the characters. I never felt like the characters actually changed, grew, or developed. Most of the novel were bits like this:

“In the days that followed…”

“For the next few days…”

We didn’t get involved in the passing days. Instead, we were just given brief overviews of discussions that took place. That meant that there was little action, and just a bunch of recapping. It led to me being disconnected from the characters and just being told that their relationships and events progressed, rather than me ‘seeing’ it for myself.

I felt like there were some pretty big problems with the characters and the organisation known as “The Eclipse.” Hillary was one character that particularly annoyed me. She is supposed to be an incredible computer genius. She wrote some impressive viruses and other software. Computer geniuses are usually incredibly smart, logical, and great with problem solving, because those are skills that you need in order to think like a programmer and write code. I’ve done a bit of programming myself and you really do need a unique way of thinking. You have to be able to look outside the box and be innovative and logical. You have to be able to see past the obvious.

While Hillary was clearly an accomplished programmer, other than that, she was a bit of a moron. As another reviewer put it, she basically got brainwashed by “the enemy.” She took their lies without question and bought into everything they said, when they were so obviously deceiving her. Maybe I’m generalising, but I don’t think an accomplished programmer would be so.. gullible.

Now, about The Eclipse. They were supposed to be this huge, mighty, powerful, illegal organisation. A good story would have made me afraid of The Eclipse.. but I wasn’t. It never felt scary or intense. The members of The Eclipse talked about killing and walking around with guns, but they always knocked on the door (rather than bursting in, guns blazing or something). And the members never seized an opportunity to capture the main characters. They had multiple opportunities, but they always let them go.

Furthermore, at one point the head of security of The Eclipse travelled Eric Omlup’s town to check up on the situation. He travelled to the town with no car (he walked), no hotel reservations, and clearly didn’t even research the town well enough to know that there was no hotel there at all (he planned to stay in one and realized there wasn’t one when he got there). Normally someone part of a “mighty organisation” would be very wealthy and ensure that all kinds of opulent arrangements are made.

When I think of a “mighty organisation,” I think of “The Company” in Prison Break. The Company has inside people everywhere: in the police force, in the government, in the hospitals, and in every major corporation. These people don’t hesitate to kill, capture, and frame people for crimes. But the ‘villains’ in The Speed of Darkness were incredibly amateurish. They never seemed lethal, they didn’t appear organised, and they didn’t seem to have a foot in every door. I wasn’t afraid of them; I didn’t get a sense of overwhelming power and control.

Finally, I would have liked to see more of the programming and hacking side of things. I think that was a really interesting element of the story but it only actually appeared in short bursts. I think it would have been great to use technology to take down The Eclipse. In a way they did, but it wasn’t really advanced technology and it wasn’t particularly epic. There were a few hacking elements, but those weren’t really the methods they used to fight The Eclipse.

With some reworking and expanding, I think this book does have the potential to be a good read. There is a really intriguing story here, it just needs to be executed better. Here are a few simple, list-style suggestions from me:

* At least another 100 pages added to the story.
* Less summaries that start with “Over the next few days.”
* More significant events and intense/action-packed chapters. This includes side plots, ideally ones that eventually tie into a bigger goal.
* Character development. I don’t see the characters ever changing. There needs to be some kind of resolution, development, or improvement in the characters.
* Better character interaction and relationships. Most of the conversations were bickering or telling stories. There needs to be more significant dialogue.
* More suspense, twists, and drama.
* More realistic and interesting characters. I did not like Hillary. She should be changed into a stronger, smarter, and less gullible character. Roscoe and Bart need to be stronger characters as well. They need to actually feel evil and threatening.
* Give the hacking and programming a larger role in the story.
* I would like to see some sort of romance, but that’s honestly just my own preference. I love a little side romance in every book.
* A good editor, better text formatting, and a proper book cover.

With these suggestions, I do think this could be a good book. There are some interesting ideas and I loved reading about the science bits and Nigel’s experiments. I hope the author will take these considerations to heart. I know there is a lot of negative criticism, but it’s an opportunity for her to improve this book and turn it into something that more readers will enjoy.… (more)