Review: The Persistence of a Good Novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 9, 2014
The changes over the past few years in the manner books are created and marketed and distributed and read is but one of the fascinating reasons why THE TRIAL OF TOMPA LEE keeps resurging. Originally written in 2005 it has had several forms, each greeted with excitement from readers and now it is the Kindle format so that it is more accessible to a larger audience - and more affordable, two factors that the change in book delivery will likely promote an even wider audience for this fine sci-fi book. Canadian born, Arizona author Edward Hoornaert's bio gleaned from snippets around the ether of the Internet include the following (written by the author): `I'm a slow learner who took a long time to realize what I finally wanted out of life. Hmm.  Now that I've typed that, I realize it isn't strictly true.  Some things I fell in love with in my middle teens.  My high school sweetheart (now my wife).  Playing orchestral music (on the oboe). In so many ways, though, it took me forever to learn what now seems obvious. For example, writing.  Creating fiction is, IMHO, the most fun I can have with my clothes on, but I didn't figure that out for a LONG time.  As I said, slow learner. But now I'm a multi-published novelist and short-story writer who has written both romances, science fiction and, most recently, science fiction romance. I'm also a musician who has played principal oboe in the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Tucson. Aside from the above, my other interests include my wife and four children, listening to music-mostly classical, but anything that's good, coin collecting, sports-baseball and hockey, staying fit.' And while that resume may not impress the guardians of great literature, it most assuredly prepares the reader for appreciating the tone, humor, flashes of prescience, social commentary, unfettered excitement that Hoornaert has created with this little jewel of a `sci-fi romance'.A brief synopsis of the plot (borrowed) is as follows: Tompa Lee, twenty-second-century "street meat" from Manhattan, has clawed her way up to the lowest rungs of the Commerce Space Navy. Unfortunately, she is framed for a heinous act of terrorism and the alien Shons demand that she be turned over to them for trial. Dante Roussel is the Navy policeman ordered to deliver Tompa - but he learns that Shon justice demands a trial-by-combat with Tompa and her supporters battling three hundred accusers. Awmit is her only Shon supporter, an old, feckless nobody who witnessed Tompa's innocence. Appalled by the injustice of two against three hundred, Dante disobeys orders and charges off to help Tompa. In the face of overwhelming odds, Tompa Lee finally discovers the trust and love that she has never known - and in the process, becomes a legend.Good to great story, here, but the joy is in the facility of transmitting the various styles of dialogue and character description and an uncanny ability to make the various forms in this space epic feel so credible. Early on in his book, Hoornaert writes `Twelve years ago, inner-city decay had led Manhattan to be 'temporarily' evacuated of honest citizens, leaving behind all the losers who didn't fit into the economic revolution unleashed by trade with the stars. Tompa had been just a girl. She'd done nothing to deserve being abandoned inside history's biggest jail.' And that is the classy style of writing that accompanies Tompa through her crafty odyssey and trial by combat. It is a space adventure, a terrific wading through the mire of good and evil, and a plot that begs for further volumes, so well has Edward Hoornaert captured our fancy. Grady Harp, March 14