3 out of 4 stars
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Solaris Seethes is a science fiction/fantasy book written by Janet McNulty. The book begins with exciting action and continues this trend throughout its entirety. While at times I personally struggled with the characters actions, the book itself was well worth the read. Therefore, I am giving this book a rating of 3 out of 4 stars.
The story begins with Rynah on her home planet of Lanyr. An unexpected event, led by Rynah’s ex-fiancé, Klanor, occurs which leaves the planet reeling in destruction forcing Rynah to flee for her life. After discovering Solaris, a ship with a human personality, Rynah sets forth on an adventure that begins with collecting four heroes from a distant planet system with the intention of saving what is left of Lanyr. The five unlikely cohorts set forth to begin their adventure of recovering artifacts that when placed together form a deadly weapon needed to stop Klanor and his men from destroying everything in their path. Action-packed sequences enliven the text as the heroes go about their adventure through several different planet systems.
McNulty does a great job of combining humor, action, and seriousness into what I considered to be great story telling. The struggles of the heroes as they continue through their journey are balanced nicely with the rest of the story. The nearly non-stop action puts the reader into the same pace as the characters giving the sense of being in the story. Since they are in a race against time to save Lanyr this pace works well with the content of the book. Also, another good aspect of the work was the disputes between Rynah and one of the heroes. This added some interesting suspense, tension, and drama to the quest that was well balanced with bits of humor arising from Solaris’s attitude.
One of the few things that did bother me about Solaris Seethes was the complete lack of cultural misunderstanding between the characters. Rynah, the main character, was from the planet of Lanyr while the other four heroes collected by Solaris reside from different time periods on Earth. It seems to me that being from different time periods, ethnicities, and cultures would cause a little more friction between the characters. However, this was not addressed much in the work. I do not mind that the characters get along as the situation dictates, but I would have liked to have seen some of the struggles along the way of getting to a point of contentment with each other. The characters, especially those from earlier centuries, also took well to being whisked away from Earth with little or no explanation of how such an action could happen.
The planets visited by the heroes matched Earth too much. I would expect that different planets, light-years away from Earth would be more varied in their appearance, foliage, animals, and atmosphere. However, the planets, while containing minute differences, could have just as easily been Earth as they could have a different planet in a different solar system. I would have enjoyed more detail about the differences between the planets, but this isn’t a major issue with the plot of the novel.
Overall, the book was well written, and I would recommend it to others. While there were a few shortcomings with the characters, the plot and action sequences make up for anything that the characters may lack. I enjoyed the book enough that I will one day read the second installment in the series.
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Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga book 1)
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