Review by tomus_cone -- Containment Breach

tomus_cone · Post by **tomus_cone** » 03 Sep 2019, 01:08

[Following is a volunteer review of "Containment Breach" by Wm. A. Yandell.]

2 out of 4 stars

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Containment Breach, a futuristic science-fiction tale from author Wm. A. Yandell, offers a genetic experiment in the midst of several mysteries and a world that includes telepaths. The central character, Walter Smithton, is a bioengineer involved in the creation of life for scientific curiosity and possibly military application when he is drawn into an expedition to explore what has happened to a previous ship and station that might have been overrun by Creatures.

There are no major flaws to the narrative’s overarching qualities. The author clearly has a good grasp on structure as the rise and fall of action both within the smaller stories and the larger one follow the traditional pattern. While this makes for an acceptable read, it doesn’t offer many twists and a book that is predicated on mysteries either offers solutions far too soon in the text or fails to build suspense enough to encourage its intended audience.

The intended audience of this work would seem to be a youngish male audience. While it doesn’t shy away from some of the complexities of genetic engineering and the possible moral conundrums, it does keep the language from becoming very harsh. The characters are, by and large, male. There are some female characters, but they are frequently discounted and pushed aside. They are not, to the author’s credit, used as a reward for good behavior.

This work could use some very thorough editing. There are several instances throughout the entire text of font changes, resulting in the sudden appearance of bold characters during a portion of a sentence for no discernable reason and just as suddenly shifting back. This makes up the bulk of the syntactical issues, but there are moments of inconsistency (such as “B 2” or “B-2” on page 5 to indicate a section), the use of “cock pit” to indicate the control room of a space craft which should be one word, and at least one instance of subject-verb disagreement on page 8.

Perhaps the greatest sin this book (over 300 pages) commits is that of being boring. On page 5, the first page of the story, the characters are introduced with minimal description, the world-building is kept at arms-length, and the mystery is kept mysterious. While the world-building does pick up a bit, it never feels immersive.

The characters are realized people with flaws and strengths that make them relatable, but aside from the central character (Walter Smithton), they never seem to grow or show more depth than their role within the story. The conflict of the ethical science being used by the military to reluctantly develop weapons is set up early on and the ending is somewhat telegraphed, making it difficult to appreciate the ending that doesn’t really seem earned on the part of the main character. The villain doesn’t even feel all that evil, and his comeuppance is weak as a result.

The story has earned a 2 out of 4 star review. While the random bold words are distracting and the characters are rather flat, I don’t hate the text. This is probably due to an underlying understanding of story structure on the part of the author. Were he to explore more of his world with us and remove some of the glaring editorial errors the shallow characters might have been seen as a quality similar to science fiction from the 50s and 60s and struck a more nostalgic chord, earning it more.

******
Containment Breach
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Juliet+1 · Post by **Juliet+1** » 03 Sep 2019, 14:52

What a shame. I hate to see a good story done poorly. Sounds like the kind of book that I would typically label with "great concept, not so great execution."

Erin Painter Baker · Post by **Erin Painter Baker** » 04 Sep 2019, 11:37

The font changes would throw me off completely. I like science fiction, but good characters are always more important than good world building. It is too bad the author just couldn't quite pull this off.

Erin Dydek · Post by **Erin Dydek** » 04 Sep 2019, 13:01

The world sounds a bit flat and the character development does too! With a bit more depth to both aspects, this book might be a more enjoyable read. Thanks for the review!