Review by DoctorMckenzie18 -- Heaven and Earth

DoctorMckenzie18 · Post by **DoctorMckenzie18** » 24 Apr 2018, 16:06

[Following is a volunteer review of "Heaven and Earth" by Arturo Riojas.]

2 out of 4 stars

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Heaven and Earth is partly a science fiction story about the interactions between humans and aliens known as Treretumians and partly a warning about the dangers of heavy metals in the environment. The majority of the novel is dedicated to the sci-fi story, with the environmental warnings given in the form of listed facts added to the end of each chapter.

The fictional portion of the story follows a scientist named Olga and a few of her colleagues as they come into contact with a group of Treretumian defectors who have left a mission tasked with surveillance of human society to recover the remains of several of their own kind who had crashed to Earth during a previous such mission. The main conflict occurs because the government, which is already suspicious of Olga, is in possession of the alien remains and stealing from the government isn’t exactly easy even if one happens to be friends with creatures capable of seemingly instant travel.

While the fictional portion of the novel is interesting, it seems to be more of a delivery method than the author’s purpose for writing. In addition to the themes embedded in the story, there are lists of facts given at the end of each chapter, primarily on the topic of cadmium and other heavy metals and their effects on the body. These warnings are given both on an individual level in the case of human health, and on a societal level in the case of the environmental and societal causes of heavy metal contamination.

I give this novel a 2 out of 4. It is interesting to read, and I enjoyed parts of it; however, there was too much I did not like about it for me to give it a positive review. It also did not seem to be professionally edited as I was able to find quite a few errors in the text in both grammar and formatting.

The thing I enjoyed most about Heaven and Earth was the alien culture of the Treretumians. While relatively few chapters shed light on them, they are covered enough to catch my interest and make me want to learn more about them. My favorite chapter was one that took place on the Treretumian home planet during the past of one of the main alien characters. It detailed a visit with this character’s grandparents and contained many interesting details of the culture and technology of this civilization. While the culture was similar to more dated human civilizations with traditional clothing and veneration for elders, the technology was futuristic, resulting in self-driven flying vehicles and greatly expanded lifespans. This chapter also had the dual purpose of making this character and his species more relatable through common experiences and values to those we have as humans. The human characters were also mostly relatable, and the included facts, if accurate, were interesting and informative.

The thing I enjoyed the least about Heaven and Earth was the continuous and pervasive paranoid, conspiratorial tone given in both parts of the novel. This is exemplified most in the factual part of the story, where the author blames industry, government, and the medical profession for disease states such as diabetes, cancer, and kidney failure through the use of products tainted with heavy metals and the treatment of symptoms rather than causes of disease. While these things could be important to point out, the author goes as far as painting all these groups as intentionally harmful to everyone and ends up sounding more paranoid than credible. The same effect can also be seen in the fictional part of the story, where both Olga and another major character seem quite paranoid about the same topics even to other characters in the story. The advanced alien characters, like the author, side with the paranoid characters, while the governments of both the United States and the alien civilization are the antagonists and the aliens themselves seem to believe that government, industry, and the medical profession are actively harming the rest of the “earthlings.” While more mild, I was also somewhat bothered that the author simply reversed the name of the harmful element on which their warnings centered, Cadmium, to come up with the harmful alien species in the fictional part of the novel; the “Muimdac.” This seemed quite lazy and obvious to me. Additionally, the alien civilization kept slaves and made no effort to hide this fact. While this is not unusual as far as societies are concerned, it does strike me as unusual for an advanced civilization which seems to have no problem criticizing the morality of American human society. Not only that, but not a single human character makes any comment or question of the main alien’s ownership of two “drones.” They seem to accept without question something which American humans abolished as immoral over a hundred years ago.

Another problem I noticed was a lack of professional editing. Most notably, several of the included facts are stated repeatedly with little to no content changes. There were also several grammatical errors and problems with formatting, as well as some words that seemed to have been italicized at random. While there were instances where italics were used to show characters’ thoughts or to emphasize words, this does not seem to be the case for these instances. I would think all these issues would be easily caught and corrected if this work were to be properly edited.

Overall, Heaven and Earth was an okay novel and interesting to read, but I would only suggest it to those with a high tolerance for paranoid conspiracy theories. It would be most highly interesting to those already interested in conspiracies, aliens, and science fiction in general. For others, I would not specifically recommend it; however, there are no groups to whom I would specifically not recommend it.

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Heaven and Earth
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