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Monday 28 October 2019

Sofa Spotlight - Defiance, Jason Krumbine

I think this might be my first dip into sci-fi (well maybe other than the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Universe). It wasn’t as full of action as I supposed. I was kind of expecting it to be heavy on fights and tension. But the plot of the story is considerably more nuanced than that.

So the story is about a star ship captain who is being interviewed by a pair of investigators who are asking questions about an event that our main character has been caught up in. The narrative flits between the past and the present day interview/investigation and the story is gradually built up layer by layer. Which essentially involves a new unidentified species and some buried secrets.

I always find it difficult to enter into completely different worlds because new worlds have the potential to have a blank canvas for aesthetics, culture, language and rules. What must be hard as a writer of fantasy/sci-fi would be creating a world which is both innovative and interesting but also accessible to the reader.

For me I think this struck a good balance. I didn’t feel like I didn’t know what was going on but there was enough of a new world revealed to me that gave my imagination the right amount of freedom and guidance to explore to its heart’s content. The nature plot enables the reader to explore this new universe with the characters. Which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I was also exited to discover that this was the first of a trilogy. So this won’t be my only adventure in this world. And it didn’t put me off sci-fi which was a bit of a worry. I’m still up for trying another and I will be getting hold of the next two books in this series very soon!

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