Review: The Swords of Gregara-Jenafa, a sci-fi romance by Cynthia Woolf
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 15, 2012
This is a short story which takes place on the planet Gregara.Jenala Delasa is the orphaned daughter of a miner. She has worked the mine alone since the death of her father. Never quite hitting a major vein but still making enough to make ends meet, barely.Santro is looking for revenge. He is searching for the man who brought pain and grief to his family. He tracks him to Rucem, the capital. Where he witnesses his enemy in a sword fight.I don't want to say more about the story as it is short and I don't want to give the plot away.This is a difficult review for me. The storyline is creative, the major characters are interesting and the setting is well developed. The story has an old west mining community feel about it which worked very well. The two main protagonists have a bit of sizzle between them and the non human character was fun.But there are some problems. In a short story where each word must carry weight in order to move the plot forward, this story has too many words. Incidents of importance in both characters back stories are repeated taking major space from character development and plot flow. The "bad guy" is never developed with sufficient believability. Another character is given a major role in the beginning and then just drops out of the story never to return.But overall, even with the problems, this is an interesting concept which would do very well with further development. Ms. Woolf has shown us she has the talent to bring a story idea to life. She shows ability in her writing. So we are going to rate it as 3.5 Stars with the hope that the author will tighten it up, give her characters a little more depth and then re-submit it to us for review.Karen Bryant Doering,Parents' Little Black Book