3 out of 4 stars
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Legend of the Stone by L. R. Ballard is a short science fiction novel. It was only 90 pages long on my device. There is, however, a lot of science fiction and action packed in those pages. The book starts out in 800 A. D. with Merlin deciding that the humans of his age were not worthy of using magic. So he sends the last of the world’s magic into outer space to return only when the time is right. Then we step forward 2222 years.
The year is 3022, 22 years after a major war destroyed most of the Earth and a group of the survivors fled to the moon to live. Lucas has grown up on the moon since he was eight years old. Scientists have tortured, trained, and taught him many things while studying the limits of human endurance. They exposed him to extreme heat, cold, electrical shock, etc. They were trying to turn him into a super soldier. The good news is that they succeeded. The bad news is that a meteor shower hits the base and he escapes.
The plot and character development in this story are very good. They are interesting and well thought out. I could not anticipate what would happen next in the story. It also left me wanting to know what would happen to Lucas in the future. I enjoyed considering the future of humanity after they have been dumb enough to destroy most of the world. The possible scientific and political developments are innumerable.
I found myself wanting more when the story ended. The author actually hints that this is just the start of a larger work. The author makes reference to this book as Legend of the Stone: Chapter 1 (Loserville Engineering T…). Checking his website, Mr. Ballard mentions that Chapter 3 is coming soon. I suspect from this that there is more to come. I hope that there is since these 90 pages ended with a lot to explain and a lot more action anticipated.
My main disappointment in this book was in the editing. Many of the sentences had awkward structure. Some of this may have been on purpose to make the characters sound futuristic and somewhat different. There were, however, also many missing words and purely editorial errors. Things like “Threw the door” instead of “Thru the door”. Or, “so if you can guess it’s a trap!” when you would expect to read, “so as you can guess, it’s a trap!” These errors and the awkward sentence structure detracted greatly from my enjoyment of this book.
This is a good science fiction story. I would recommend it to all action and science fiction lovers. However, due to the bad editing, I cannot give it a rating any better than 3 out of 4 stars.
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Legend of the Stone
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