2 out of 4 stars
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The Escape by Seven Steps opens on Venus in the seventy-first century, where women are in charge of everything and men are held as slaves. It has been this way ever since Venus was settled, and yet not everyone is content with the arrangement. Taylor has fallen in love with her slave Nick and wants nothing more than to find a way to leave Venus and live on a planet where the two of them can be equals. Their best bet may be to flee to Earth, but that planet is said to be full of war and disease. However, the two of them are desperate enough to try anything, and when Taylor’s friend Eva gets drawn into the plot to escape, what follows is an intriguing adventure. However, the story doesn’t always live up to what it could be, and so I can only give this book 2 out of 4 stars.
The premise of a female-dominated society on Venus holding men as slaves feels a bit like something that could come out of old pulp sci-fi, and that’s not at all a bad thing. The rest of the book follows through on that feeling, which makes for a fun, light read. The storyline is, for the most part, easy to follow, and the author gives an excellent sense of setting. While there are pages that consist of nothing but back-and-forth dialogue, there are enough little descriptions tossed in to keep a sense of the world and what everything is meant to look like. The first few chapters include a brief description of what everything looks like in the first couple of paragraphs, which is very useful to a reader just getting her bearings on Venus of the far future.
The reason I couldn’t give the book more than two stars, even though the story interested me, is because there were far too many things that weren’t properly explained. I didn’t know why it was that Taylor was interested in leaving Venus; while it was clear that she loved Nick, I couldn’t understand why that would be enough for her to decide everything she had ever learned was wrong. Eva’s thought process made much more sense to me, since she was torn between her affections for her own slave, AJ, and the hold her culture had on her. However, later in the book, her mind changed far too easily. In fact, a lot of things happened too easily. Whenever it seemed as though the protagonists were facing some great danger, it would always clear up without much trouble or suspense. This is a short book, and I think a bit more explanation and tension could have been added.
The most intriguing part came about two-thirds of the way through, and it was also sadly the hardest to believe. I won’t say much about this to avoid giving away spoilers, but I will say that there wasn’t enough of a build-up to the twist, and there were some elements afterward that weren’t explained at all. While the ending is on a cliffhanger and may well be leading up to a sequel, I would have appreciated having some questions answered rather than being left to puzzle over what various details could mean.
As I said before, the story interested me, and if it had been fleshed out a little more, I would have happily given it three stars. I’d recommend it to people who just want a quick little sci-fi read and who are willing to suspend a fair bit of disbelief.
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The Escape
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