Sunday 12 May 2013

SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW: The Age of Scorpio - Gavin Smith

Release Date: 18/04/13
Publisher:  Gollancz

SYNOPSIS:

Praised by Stephen Baxter and Adam Roberts, reviewed ecstatically by SFX magazine Gavin Smith's first novel VETERAN announced an exciting new voice on the SF scene. WAR IN HEAVEN, set in the same universe followed. Now comes a new stand-alone SF thriller. Of all the captains based out of Arclight only Eldon Sloper was desperate enough to agree to a salvage job in Red Space. And now he and his crew are living to regret his desperation. In Red Space the rules are different. Some things work, others don't. Best to stick close to the Church beacons. Don't get lost. Because there's something wrong about Red Space. Something beyond rational. Something vampyric ...Long after The Loss mankind is different. We touch the world via neunonics. We are machines, we are animals, we are hybrids. But some things never change. A Killer is paid to kill, a Thief will steal countless lives. A Clone will find insanity, an Innocent a new horror. The Church knows we have kept our sins. Gavin Smith's new SF novel is an epic slam-bang ride through a terrifyingly different future.


REVIEW:

I love to spend time between the covers of books. This is purely as I get to live multiple lives spending time in multiverses that give me something special with each expedition and whilst not every book is to my own taste they do give me something different from the norm whether its lessons in writing or telling a story in a different manner to that which I’m used to.

Yet Gavin has always been an author that whilst I thought was OK, was never one that really jumped to the top of my TBR pile when it landed. Don’t get me wrong, its solid storytelling, it has great combat and when added to characters that are needed to stand against the trials that Gavin throws at them really should give you goose-bumps at the very thought. Yet for all of this, it’s the characters that aren’t hooking me in the way that they should be. They feel fairly flat and whilst the story is pretty high octane they don’t have me caring enough to really worry about their health when each matter reaches a head.

All round as usual something reasonable and definitely a book that I had an alright time reading but still nothing to make me stand up and shout about.



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