Indie Sci-Fi Digest
I wanted to share a couple of indie sci-fi reads I finished sorta recently.
There’s so much good sci-fi out there. It’s always amazing to me what does and what doesn’t get published by traditional publishers. Both of these books have great world building and compelling characters. If I’d picked them up from major publishers, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.
Origin (Parallax)
Okay, I will admit these authors could have done more with the title here. But I’m fond of simple titles for sci-fi, so free pass.
I did a TikTok review for this one where I noted that the only problem with this book is that it feels incomplete. Its characters are interesting. Its transhuman and corporate-controlled spacelanes worldbuilding is really interesting.
But only one of its four narrative threads has a clear and complete story arc. You can see where some of the others are going and especially how they’re going to come together, but the mystery behind the events unfolding is very opaque by the end of the first book.
But, like I said, it’s good so I plan to go back. It’s just the ticking clock on my Libby loans that’s keeping me from picking up the second book from Kindle Unlimited.
The Immortal Remains
So this one’s a one-off, for now.
I was actually an ARC reader on this one and have been chatting with the author. I think I’ve single-handedly convinced him to write a sequel. (Okay, I wasn’t really alone in that, I don’t think.)
Once he does that, I’ll talk him into a prequel.
Again, the world building is really intriguing. We’re tossed into a future several centuries hence, where mankind is laboring diligently to colonize the solar system and get all our eggs out of one basket.
The catch is that this is not entirely voluntary. A mega-billionaire has blackmailed the human race into doing it. It’s either prove we’re worthy of the stars or she unleashes nanite bombs and destroys the Earth. (Drives a hard bargain, that one.)
The hundred-year deadline is up and though we’ve gone out there and Expansed-up the solar system, we didn’t make quota, so she’s going to nano-nuke the planet anyway.
All that’s just the backstory, folks. Our hero is said mad billionaire’s daughter who is, like her crazed mother, immortal and nigh indestructible.
This is a problem because she’s sick of life, especially a life lived in the shadow of what her mother has done to the human race, so she’s been looking to check out for some time. And despite the world ending, she’s pretty sure her mother won’t let her suffer the same fate as billions of others left behind. Just as she’s pretty sure there’s no way she can talk Mommy-dearest out of pushing the button.
It’s an interesting psychology to explore amidst a rich sci-fi world. The rest of the plot revolves around certain reveals that I shan’t spoil, but check it out!
And what of me, dear reader…
It occurs to me I never posted—on my own Substack!?!—that I have another book out there in the wild.
Now, this is a sequel to athena(emergent), so could you jump right in with this book and skip the first one? I’m genuinely curious how that would work. I feel like it would be fine up to a point because the two main perspective characters here are actually new and they’re both going into the world of the story—twenty years into our future—as outsiders in the setting established by the heroes of the first book.
So in a lot of ways, you’re meeting the world Athena built through newcomers’ eyes.
And then at a certain point there’s going to be a reveal that may blow a few gaskets. Or not. I don’t know. If you haven’t read athena(emergent) and would like to read this cold and tell me how it felt, it’s free on KU!
Or you could just start with the first book because it is too.
I haven’t started my next book yet. I’d planned to jump back to a thousand years into the future and write the sequel to Descendants, but I may go even further. I was lamenting (just to myself in the shower one day) that the most successful books these days seem to fantasy novels with love triangles and thinking I should’ve just tried to write one of those…
When I straight-up thought of a fantasy novel with a love triangle.
Okay, so it’s not really fantasy. It’s actually part of the same continuity as the Athena books and Descendants, but even further into the future, set amongst a population that doesn’t know what vast technological powers have done to their world.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and all that.
I’m close to critical mass on that one, but we’ll see. Something else could happen and realign my priorities. You never know.