3 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Solaris Seethes is a book about the anger and heartbreak of being betrayed by someone you trusted. It is much more than that though. Janet McNulty artfully twists themes of friendship and purpose into this action-packed, sci-fi novel.
Rynah is from the planet Lanyr. She comes in late to work because the love of her life, Klanor, had proposed to her that morning. Little does she know that it was all a ploy and his real purpose is to get his hands on the crystal that she is guarding. That day he makes his move stealing the crystal and destroying Lanyr. Now Rynah, with the help of her spaceship Solaris, has to recruit four humans from the primitive Terra Sector to help her find the rest of the crystals and stop Klanor. Together they embark on a quest following an ancient prophecy that Rynah had always thought meant nothing.
I enjoyed this book. I would rate it 3 out of 4 stars. I didn’t give it 4 stars for multiple reasons. My main reason is the cursing. I like my books to be completely clean and I don’t feel like cursing adds anything to the book. McNulty didn’t even use actual curse words that much. Just the little tidbits like, “Cursing about the time lost, Rynah slammed the hovercraft into full speed and sped down the lane towards the shipyard.” I feel like if the author had substituted the word angry or upset for cursing it would convey the same emotion and keep Rynah a good role model for teens.
Another reason that I lowered my rating are the inconsistencies. Take the grass on Lanyr for example. At the beginning of the book it was emerald, by chapter 8 it was royal purple, then the grass was emerald with a faded purple tint to it, and then by chapter 19 we were back to just plain emerald again. This didn’t bother my enjoyment of the book but once I had noticed it I felt like I had to mention it.
My final reason for lowering the rating is the amount of parentheses McNulty uses. It is distracting when you are reading a story and all of the sudden you have to snap out of the story read what was written in the parentheses and immediately snap back into the story. I feel like there are much more artful ways to write that don’t excessively use parentheses.
After reading all of my problems with the book you would think that I really hated the book but I didn’t. I think that the characters were well-written, three-dimensional people whom you could relate to. They all had their weaknesses and they overcame them in different ways. I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the rest of the saga.
******
Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes | on Smashwords
Like papaya12's review? Post a comment saying so!