Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆
Nova is a bounty hunter, smuggler and generally survivor of life in the grey areas of legality. In need of a quick buck to fix her space-ship, she takes on the hunt for a couple of escaped fugitives. She locates them working in an archaeological dig being run by the Confederacy – which is odd, since the planet in question was supposedly never inhabited. An unfortunate translation error ends up helping unleash a long-buried race of reptiloid extra-terrestrials, the Ancients – a species with both the inclination and the ability to wage genocidal war on the rest of the galaxy. And Nova is the only one left who can stop them.
This is remarkably gripping for a story which contains little more than two human characters: Nova, and Codon, the Confederacy scientist in charge of the excavations. Everyone else is taken out of the equation quite early; I guess you could marginally include Cal, the Class Four Laborbot, who helps Nova on her ship? Yet it goes to show that, in the presence of a strong story-line, you don’t need a large cast. This pits Nova against the Ancients in straightforward terms, and it seems a one-sided battle – until she’s captured, and is harshly interrogated. The mental torture inflicted on her has a strange effect: I’d be hard pushed to explain exactly what, but it seems to give her some abilities involving the fourth dimension.
It’s not quite time travel: nothing that controllable. Yet it’s along those lines, and is not the only moment at which the story reminded me of an episode of Doctor Who. The whole “one person bravely facing down an alien enemy” is definitely Who-esque. though unlike the Doctor, Nova has no qualms about getting her hands dirty, when necessary. As in any story which plays with time, there is potential for paradox, and I’m not certain this is rock-solid in that aspect. There are a couple of other plot-holes too: for example, the force-field which keeps Nova on the planet, suddenly goes away at the end, for no other reason that it needs to.
Still, it’s a solid page-turner, and I was particularly impressed by the complete lack of any romantic angles. Ok, the only male to be found is Codon, and he’s a bit of a dick, to put it mildly. However, it remained refreshing: I’ve read (and discarded) my share of thinly-disguised romances in action-heroine clothing, thank you very much. Nova, in comparison, seems the real deal. I also enjoyed the sequences where Nova’s reality is on very thin ice: conveying a psychotic break isn’t easy, yet Bryant seems to capture the thoroughly unsettling sense of having no idea what’s “real”. Where will Nova and her uncertain abilities go next? I’m keen to find that out.
Author: Saffron Bryant [a.k.a. “Saff”]
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 10 in the Nova Chronicles. [Amazon calls is 2 of 11, but the first book there is really a prequel, so is #0]