Review: Truly Reads Like a TV Series
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 28, 2014
The premise is simple enough. An enigmatic spaceship, Origin, is known to exist and believed to have been around since before humans were created. As with most well-crafted novels, the heart of the story is in the telling. Francis Moore is a fairly straightforward protagonist, but supporting characters such as the young, arrogant Mitch Rainey and the daring, beautiful Richelle de Villepin leap right off the page. Some readers will no doubt find themselves casting these roles in their heads as they read along.Author Nathaniel Dean James excels at ending each chapter in a way which leaves the reader itching to read the next one. He may introduce a new character or plot twist in the chapter’s final paragraphs, inspiring a twinge of curiosity that causes the reader to instinctively move to the next page to see how this character/event is explored. It is a little unfortunate that he decided to do this with the ending, though the afterword reports that the next book is well underway and readers will not have to wait long to continue the story.Hopefully, James has an ultimate plan for the series so that it does not risk falling prey to the same fate as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. A science fiction series as engaging and compelling as this one is deserving of more closure than he has given this novel, and it would be nice to see him balance the sense of intrigue with a sense of satisfaction at having finished reading his novels. It truly is similar to a TV series in its scope and storytelling, and anyone who has ever fallen in love with a series only to see it cancelled on a cliffhanger would agree that such a thing ought not happen before the Origin can be explained.