2011 Book 6: The North Star Serial
Book 6: The North Star Serial Part I by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, isbn 9781452822808, 145 pages, Schmidt Sousa Publications, $5.50
The Premise: Jannaii Resnick's first day as Captain of the destroyer North Star is an eventful one: she and her crew are thrust immediately into the discovery that a formerly peaceful alien race, the Koreleans, have revolted against the the Coalition (a group of worlds settled by travelers from Old Earth) and begun a war that may devastate both sides. Over the succeeding months, Jannaii and her crew experience close calls and personal loss while struggling to understand the basis for this war. The story was originally told in serial format for a family-friendly website called Digital Dragon, and the author has pulled them together her in chronological (rather than publication) order.
Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: I appreciate the effort Bryan Thomas Schmidt has put into creating this world and publishing this book. There's a lot of potential in the characters and concept, but that potential is only scratched at here. The author's introduction talks about the problems of telling an on-going story in 1500-word increments (the requirements of the website that originally published the tales), a problem I can relate to -- "flash fiction" is not my forte. I think publishing these stories as-is creates a second problem for the author: some information is repeated ad-nauseum, and some (I think) vital information about how the Coalition came to existence is left unmentioned until late in the book (in a story I assume was probably published early on, but which chronologically takes place much later). The book overall might have benefited from an additional pass through to clarify some things earlier and to remove needless repetition of information now that the stories are in book fashion.
What intrigues me about the book is the underlying concept. Yes, at first blush it all feels a little "Star Trek-y," but there are enough differences that I was able to put that comparison aside pretty quickly. The concept here is not that Earth colonized the Stars, but rather that Christians did. All of the North Star crew, regardless of their home planet, make reference to the God they serve; the Koreleans make frequent mention of the Missionaries who tried to coerce their people into giving up their own gods. I'm intrigued, of course, by the question of how Christians, leaving their homeworld to escape religious persecution, came to be such a dominant force in the stars (and how all other Earth religions managed to not take to the stars at all, if in fact there are no Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, etc, colonies out there). I'm also intrigued by the fair look Schmidt gives us into the Korelean society throughout the book -- they may be militaristic, but they also seem to have a good point in saying that they don't want their homegrown culture overrun by these Christian forces.
I'm giving the book 3 stars because I'm intrigued enough to wonder how Schmidt is going to develop the story, and also to wonder what he'd be able to do with it if he'd rework the whole thing with the intention of it being a novel rather than a gathering of short stories, that I'm able to overlook the choppiness and repetitiveness of the storytelling.
The Premise: Jannaii Resnick's first day as Captain of the destroyer North Star is an eventful one: she and her crew are thrust immediately into the discovery that a formerly peaceful alien race, the Koreleans, have revolted against the the Coalition (a group of worlds settled by travelers from Old Earth) and begun a war that may devastate both sides. Over the succeeding months, Jannaii and her crew experience close calls and personal loss while struggling to understand the basis for this war. The story was originally told in serial format for a family-friendly website called Digital Dragon, and the author has pulled them together her in chronological (rather than publication) order.
Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: I appreciate the effort Bryan Thomas Schmidt has put into creating this world and publishing this book. There's a lot of potential in the characters and concept, but that potential is only scratched at here. The author's introduction talks about the problems of telling an on-going story in 1500-word increments (the requirements of the website that originally published the tales), a problem I can relate to -- "flash fiction" is not my forte. I think publishing these stories as-is creates a second problem for the author: some information is repeated ad-nauseum, and some (I think) vital information about how the Coalition came to existence is left unmentioned until late in the book (in a story I assume was probably published early on, but which chronologically takes place much later). The book overall might have benefited from an additional pass through to clarify some things earlier and to remove needless repetition of information now that the stories are in book fashion.
What intrigues me about the book is the underlying concept. Yes, at first blush it all feels a little "Star Trek-y," but there are enough differences that I was able to put that comparison aside pretty quickly. The concept here is not that Earth colonized the Stars, but rather that Christians did. All of the North Star crew, regardless of their home planet, make reference to the God they serve; the Koreleans make frequent mention of the Missionaries who tried to coerce their people into giving up their own gods. I'm intrigued, of course, by the question of how Christians, leaving their homeworld to escape religious persecution, came to be such a dominant force in the stars (and how all other Earth religions managed to not take to the stars at all, if in fact there are no Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, etc, colonies out there). I'm also intrigued by the fair look Schmidt gives us into the Korelean society throughout the book -- they may be militaristic, but they also seem to have a good point in saying that they don't want their homegrown culture overrun by these Christian forces.
I'm giving the book 3 stars because I'm intrigued enough to wonder how Schmidt is going to develop the story, and also to wonder what he'd be able to do with it if he'd rework the whole thing with the intention of it being a novel rather than a gathering of short stories, that I'm able to overlook the choppiness and repetitiveness of the storytelling.