Official Review: The Providence of Fortune by T. K. Love

[jvez]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Providence of Fortune" by T. K. Love.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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A settlement on the moon, space transportation, and a simulation game involving all senses are only a few of the futuristic developments presented in The Providence of Fortune. This novella by T.K. Love is bound to captivate science fiction fans.

The Providence of Fortune retells the life of businessman Conrad Jefferson. Conrad’s lifelong dream is to build and launch the Palladium Station, ‘a casino hot spot at the edges of space.’ The Palladium is the fulfillment of his father’s vision. With Conrad’s company, Embark Interplanetary Space Transportation, this vision is almost at hand. However, Conrad’s business partner starts pushing for an alliance among Embark Interplanetary, the moon-settlement, Helios, and the underwater city, New America. This alliance will not only impede the launching of the Palladium but will also result in more problems with terrorists and anti-settlement groups. While Conrad struggles to find a way out of this unwanted alliance, his friend Zain invents a simulation game hosted by the human-like character Nebula. Zain invites Conrad to test the game, and Conrad gives the game a rather lukewarm assessment. But unbeknownst to Conrad, what he dismissed to be just another simulation will eventually affect his lifelong dream.

This novella has a very good premise and some notable characters. Nebula, in particular, invites curiosity and will definitely compel readers to read more. However, despite the enthralling plot and an ensemble of interesting characters, the book failed to establish a concrete world. The author immediately jumped into introducing his characters and some important events, without fully establishing the world in the story. I want to know more about what the world looked like, what were the societal systems, the prevailing political constructs, etc.

The book also focused on the grand opening of the Palladium, but until now, I honestly do not know much about this space station. The book mentioned some snippets of the Palladium's design, but I could not fully grasp its functions or picture the Palladium yet. I understand that The Providence of Future is the first book in an intended series. Perhaps the author plans to discuss more on the Palladium in later installments. Nonetheless, I would have appreciated more information regarding the Palladium in this book as it is one of the key concepts in the story.

The book also needs proofreading. I noticed a couple of typos, wrong punctuation usage, and capitalization errors. There were also a number of homophone errors and wrong word usage. For instance, the author used ‘find’ for ‘fined,’ ‘older’ for ‘odor,’ and often wrote ‘it’s’ instead of ‘its.’

Though the author seemed to have great ideas for this novella, I have to give The Providence of Fortune 2 out of 4 stars. I deducted 2 stars due to the grammatical errors and the lack of descriptions on the world featured in the story. I would still recommend this to science fiction fans. But please note that if you are looking for a futuristic world explored through vivid descriptions, then this book may not reach your expectations.

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The Providence of Fortune
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Like jvez's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Ginnamassa19]

From your description of the book, it seems as though the novel was too short to properly elaborate on all the details the author wanted to put in XD The premise of the book reminds me of the anime Sword Art Online, and it does seem interesting--although your review has made me more cautious about reading it!

Thank you for your critique of this book--I found it very helpful

[maggiechap]

I'm definitely cautious about reading this book, though I still might give it a shot. the idea is intriguing enough, but it sounds like it needs some fine tuning still, which seems to be an issue with a lot of the books that come through OBC.

[Jackie Holycross]

I sometimes think authors spend too much time on descriptions, so maybe this would be a good book for me.

[gen_g]

Thank you for the insightful review, although I would have to give it a miss since the grammatical errors are a turn off! Otherwise, I'm sure that it would have been an even better read.

[meadhbh]

It's a shame that the book was lacking that level of world-building, as that's something I think is especially important in science-fiction. I guess that's what can happen when you write a novella instead of a full-length novel.

[Lu_rire]

I am weak at writing descriptions too and so i sympathise with the author. However the editing certainly needs much improvement.