Achieve The Remnant (The Awakening #1) Illustrated By Paul B. Spence File Brochure
Remnant ties together themes of love, loss, and sacrifice in a distant future that is both frightening and hopeful, Set in the latter half of theth century, this story, the first in a series, focuses on a fallen colony world on the edge of humansettled space, Biggerpicture elements, such as an interstellar war, play out in the background but still impact the characters in profound ways,
The main character, Hrothgar Tebrey, is a soldier who is deeply conflicted about the things that he has had to do in his career, He begins the story alone and without hope, but matures and grows over the course of the story to become the hero for the rest of the series, You see him here at the end of his career, but the beginning of his journey, Goodreads Autograph Copy
What really happen to a scientific group and a military soldier as they were left stranded on an archaeological dig on another planet for almost a year due to war Their story unfolds as the learn to survive with the aid of Lt.
Commander Hrothgar Tebrey.
As things go out of control they learn to survive hunger and cold while losing fellow members, They battle sinister forces and beasts along the way with people trying for power,
The Remnant is about surviving and what choices we make to live despite what we were told to believe in, What we are willing to do for surviving and the people we care for,
The story keeps the reader engrossed as you never what will happen next, Don't know when I picked it up but it was an interesting read, This was free download for me, as an introduction to a new author,
I have to say, this book did grip me straight from the start with suspense, horror, immensely well developed characters and serious fast paced story progression,
Then we met Tebrey, a burly special forces soldier, He does not give away much in the beginning, but soon he is showing a human side that is very likeable,
By the end I want more and thus I immediately purchased the second volume, knowing I want to read this author again,
As Indy published books go, this was a good one compared to some I have seen, but not top perfect, There are small formatting errors and minor spelling mistakes, which are noticeable, but simply because the story is so solid, you quickly forget them, and you let yourself be drawn further and further in Tebrey's worlds.
Huge potential as a future science fiction writer, This book had potential that it didnt live up to, The plot was interesting, the characters, especially Hunter and Tebrey, were awesome, and the setting had some intriguing features,
The main problem was the pacing, For instance, they dont even get marooned until about a third of the way in, Most of the story before then is just establishing characters and setting, I know some people prefer that sort of thing, but Im not one of them, I like stories that start where the action starts, After the slow start, the story gets further slowed down by subplots that have too much page count devoted to them,
Another problem was the amount of infodumping in conversations, At times it felt more like people were reciting lessons to each other than talking, Despite this, there was some great dialogue, especially between Tebrey and Hunter,
The final major problem was that the story couldnt seem to decide what it was, Was it an archaeological mystery, a space opera, a horror, a thriller, what Combined with the pacing problems, it made the book feel a bit too unfocused,
More minor issues were that characters sometimes werent quite consistent in how they acted and that the narrative tone was so dry that there were bits it was difficult to push through.
Also, the blurb is somewhat misleading, as some things it mentions dont come up until the very end,
Wow, reading over what Ive written it seems like I didn't like the story at all, Thats not the case. The plot was good I just wish itd moved faster and had more time spent on it instead of subplots, The setting seems very interesting, . . though this is the third scifi novel featuring a war between humans and aliens in a row where Ive thought the aliens were more interesting than the humans, but Im pretty sure thats just because Im weird, so thats not the authors fault.
Allinall, it was a good read, it just couldve been so much better,
Reading has been a struggle since COVID, with scifi as the only genre that comes close to sustaining my interest, Recently Spence decided to offer up this Awakening series for free, sustaining us during the outbreak, I've followed Spence's blog posts for some time, as he works as an editor and often shares passages and his corrections, so I thought I'd give it a try.
If nothing else, it wouldn't be full of errors,
The beginning was absolutely stellar, invoking comparisons to any great in epic scifi, A searchandrecovery mission to an immense battleship, discovery of a few survivors, including Special Operations member Tebrey, and then following Tebrey as he goes on his next mission to investigate a possible unearthed weapon at an archaeological dig.
The background setting is intriguing, with a multispecies alliance in an intergalactic war against the Nurgg, a species that sees eradication or enslavement as the only options for any other lifeforms they encounter.
A brief interjection: I have a terrible time with Kindle books and pacing, Though I usually track by per cent read, it's still hard to get a feel for the overall length, As people during the U, S. COVID would say, March has lastdays so far,
So my feeling of the book is that the firstor so was amazing and was an entire book in and of itself, reminding me of Reynolds in sitelinkHouse of Suns.
Epic space stuff. Then the book became more like modern Andre Norton Witch World, with the remainder essentially taking place on planet and being more about group dynamics and local politics.
Actually, now that I think about it, something about the onplanet time reminds me very much of sitelinkAndre Norton and Witch World, The planet the people are excevating on is lowtech, but there are structures and remnants of a prior civilization, Most of the time, there isn't any ambivalence about the nature of good and evil in the conflict, No one is conflicted or grimdark,
The writing was skillful in a technical sense, My challenges were that I felt like the character of Tebrey changed quite a bit, most likely for story reasons, For instance, in the initial shipboard chapters, we have the picture of someone who has a mission related to a possible weapon that will help in the war, Later, on the ground, he allows himself to abandon that mission .
Still later, we are given to understand that his mission is protecting/defending the archeologists and scientists
Then it seems to become about him connecting with his partner, and then a potential romantic interest, Given that he's the main character and viewpoint, it becomes more than a little problematic, However, he's generally an honorable and likable dude, so it remains very readable,
The
ending seemed rushed, given all that happened in the course of the story .
Upon further reflection, there is something where Spence does cutaways from scenes that feels unfinished, I felt like there were some we would be going back to, but never did, Mostly, they did feel like they tied up the plot, but in the overall sense of telling a story, it felt uneven, like one was sailing along and then a big wave comes through.
Given all that, it may sound like a negative review, It's not. This is just me, thinking about the things that worked and didn't work after finishing, Mostly, I think it boils down to Spence trying to do too much in this book, which is what resulted in an uneven story/pacing/character, There's the bones of two great books in here,
I liked the overall themes, the conflict, and the space worldbuilding, I was less enamored of the lowtech world, which reminded me more of basic epic fantasy setting, and might have skipped if I had known we were going to hang out there the rest of the book.
Actually, the onworld section felt like Barbara Hambly's sitelinkThe Time of the Dark if you don't recognize the Witch World reference, Quite honestly, in the time of COVID, the fact that I actually finished a book this long in a week should say something,
Oh, and there's a psionic bond with a giant space cat, .