4 out of 4 stars
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Recusant is the second book of The Brin Archives, written by Jim Cronin. I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars because it is an engaging tale of the sci-fi genre that was difficult to review because I kept getting sucked into the story! I believe readers of other genres of fiction will also enjoy the plot’s twists and social commentary.
The prologue opens with a bang – literally, as there is a battle going on – then jumps to the present time of the Rocker family, Maliche Rocker in particular. He is an archaeologist instead of a geneticist, and is therefore considered an embarrassment to one of the most prominent families on the planet. One of the Brin’s biggest societal problems is that each new generation lives less time than the previous generation, so they will eventually die out if the problem can’t be solved by the geneticists. Professor Neywa, Maliche’s mentor, helps him unlock a journal written by the Saviors (the original Rockers who settled the planet). After experiencing this journal in vision form, Maliche is convinced that the Kolandi (the planet’s original inhabitants) are still in existence, though everyone else thinks that they are extinct. Maliche begins a journey to prove everyone wrong, in spite of resistance from everyone but his fellow archaeologists. This book is all about secrets. The Miners’ Guild has secrets. The Saviors have secrets. Selan Rocker and his wife Nedia have secrets from each other. Even the biocomputer and the Skae have secrets, all of which are woven into a detailed plot that has a number of surprises.
I like many things about this book, such as the writing style, the complex plot, and the story within a story done well. The author also has a dry sense of humor. For example, traffic is bad in First Town, and various people complain about it. Computer geeks have posters of computer game fantasy characters. Prof Neywa hides artifacts that the government would have otherwise seized, saying, “Nobody would ever disturb my personal notes on the most hated and boring course offered by this university.” I had to laugh, while trying to imagine a history course more boring than accounting classes. The Brin words are fun because some of their swear words are suspiciously close to ours, and they use bird-related words from Earth, such as quetzal. One of the animals on the planet is a grendel, a shout-out to Beowulf. I also enjoyed Maliche’s defiance of his family. Like any novel, there are a few grammatical errors, but they don’t detract from the story or make it hard to read.
There are a few small things I don’t like. First, the thankfully small amount of romance in the plot feels rushed over, as if the author was embarrassed to even include it. Since it’s important to the plot, it should be given a bit more consideration. Second, some conversations toward the end of the book seem simplistic in comparison to the dialogue in the rest of the novel. The author conveys the necessary information to move the plot along, but it’s almost as if someone else is writing that part of the dialogue. Third, we don’t get a halfway decent description of the Brin or Kolandi or other background information until about a third of the way through the novel. Yes, this is book two in a sci-fi series, but many of the series I have read have a bit of introduction, background or dialogue to connect the current story to the prior one near the beginning. That’s helpful if you’re reading the books out of order for whatever reason.
Can you start on the second book in the series and still enjoy it? Absolutely. Did I feel lost at any point? Not lost so much as I felt there is some information missing that was probably in the first book of the series, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reading this entertaining story.
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Recusant
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