science fiction – Feed Me Fiction

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Posted on June 28, 2021June 28, 2021 by FeedMeFiction

Synopsis

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission–and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that’s been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it’s up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.

Pages: 1 2

book review, book tour, fiction, gifted

Book Tour! Subject Twenty One by A.E. Warren

Posted on June 21, 2021 by FeedMeFiction

Synopsis

What if our future lies 40,000 years in our past?

Elise’s world is forever changed when she is given the opportunity of a lifetime – to work at the Museum of Evolution and be a Companion to the Neanderthal, Subject Twenty-One.

As a Sapien, a member of the lowest order of humans, she and others like her are held responsible for the damages inflicted on the world by previous generations. This job may be Elise’s only chance to escape a stagnating life in an ostracised and impoverished community.

But it doesn’t take long for Elise to realise that, away from the familiarity and safety of her home, her own secrets are much harder to conceal.

And the longer she stays the more she comes to realise that little separates her from the exhibits . . . and a cage of her own.

Review

Subject Twenty One is the first book in A.E Warren’s series Tomorrow’s Ancestors. Tagged as ‘Jurassic Park meets Sapiens’ I was quick to sign up to this Book Blog Tour and get my hands on a copy to read and review. Subject Twenty One was gifted to me by the publisher Del Rey and is set to be released on 1st July … along with book two The Hidden Base which I will be reading and reviewing as soon as it plonks through my letter box!

A.E Warren self published these books previously (under different titles) and I’m so glad they got picked up! Reading Subject Twenty One was easy, the story gripped me completely right from the beginning and it kept my attention all the way through. I loved how much research had been undertaken in writing this book but how this didn’t make it ever feel overwhelming or complicated. Warren has created a fascinating class system with various quirks and categories, all while weaving a heartfelt narrative.

For me, the connections between the characters was key. Elise is hired to be a companion to Twenty One, a Neanderthal who has been brought to life in order to be an exhibit in a museum as well as be part of an experimental program. She leaves her family to do this job and in turn discovers more about the other classes and the events in history which brought about their current situation. In the museum, Elise encounters a Potior, the highest class of being but also other Sapiens, like herself. By the end of the book, Elise has brought together an interesting group who work really well together and I was fully invested in them all.

As a setting, the museum was amazing, I could imagine it very clearly – I’d very much like to visit it! It definitely gave off Jurassic Park vibes but there is nothing wrong with that at all, I loved it! The genetic engineering aspect was one that I personally felt could have been explored in more depth but I also think that doing so would have strained the main storylines progression.

Overall, I enjoyed Subject Twenty One a lot and will be reading book two ASAP. It is YA and offers a thought provoking look at humanity and the future as well as the past. I will say that this book includes details of a Pandemic which some of you may not want to read about just yet but I found the detail was sparing and not gratuitous, only really mentioning it in passing. Warren writes a unique and intriguing narrative in a believable dystopia.

Goodreads Rating 4 / 5 Stars

book review, fiction, gifted

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Posted on August 18, 2020 by FeedMeFiction

Left: UK Cover – Published by Hodder & Stoughton – August 4th 2020

Right: US Cover – Published by Del Rey Books – August 4th 2020

Which cover do you like best?

I’m totally torn! they are both beautiful – I love the simplicity and the bright purple on the UK cover but I also love the imagery on the US cover which does give a good visual for the actual book content!

I received an early e-copy of this book in exchange for a review through Netgalley.

Synopsis

An outsider who can travel between worlds discovers a secret that threatens her new home and her fragile place in it, in a stunning sci-fi debut that’s both a cross-dimensional adventure and a powerful examination of identity, privilege, and belonging.

Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total.

On this Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. Now she has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works—and shamelessly flirts—with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security.

But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined—and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.

Review

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson is a staggering debut and the most recent Sci-Fi novel that I’ve read but not the first novel this year that has featured multi-verses! Does anyone have any recommendations for others? I seem to be really digging them in 2020 – maybe it’s because the real world is a mess!

Anyway, Cara our protagonist is absolutely full to bursting with intrigue for the reader, she’s a bad-ass female character that I loved even though some of her actions were morally questionable. Discovering her secrets as we read through her story and traveled through worlds with her was like watching Making a Murderer all over again and trying to guess what had happened and WHY. Alongside Cara there are several characters that I really invested in – Nik Nik and Jean for example among others. Since there are the same characters in different worlds, you can see them wholly – the good and the bad of their characteristics which makes for a fascinating dissection as their choices and circumstances change.

I have to talk about the world(s) around Cara though. Not only has Johnson imagined multiple versions of Earth, it’s not Earth as we know it but an Earth in the future – writing this I’m not even 100% sure it was Earth (it is). It’s different, there is a split between those who live in the city (rich, flashy apartment blocks) and those who live outside of it (poorer, imagine wasteland), in the desert with limited protection from the Sun which is ridiculously hot – so hot that there are times of day where you can’t be out in it or you’ll burn and only the city-dwellers seem to have protection against it. Johnson’s imagination seems to have no bounds in The Space Between Worlds and I read the split between the city and the desert (and the worlds) with a terrifying societal commentary around race, religion, privilege and wealth.

As such a fascinating read, I really recommend this to readers wanting a different kind of Sci-fi read as I do believe it twists the genre on itself. The narrative bounds along so quickly, I often found myself unable to put it down – there is one point where the whole trail of the story seems to be thrown out like toys out of a toy box and then re-arranged on a shelf, I’ll be keeping my eye out for any future releases by Johnson.

The Space Between Worlds is available now on Amazon.

Goodreads Rating: 4 / 5 and well deserved!

book review, book tour, fiction, gifted, Uncategorized

Book Tour! The Very Real World of Emily Adams by Samantha Rose

Posted on June 9, 2020June 9, 2020 by FeedMeFiction

Published by Immortal Works LLC – June 2020

Synopsis

“Be a rebel. In a world of darkness, become light.”

Emily Adams has lost everything. Injured from a fight with her now officially-ex-boyfriend, she’s fled to an unfamiliar city with nothing but the change in her pocket and a broken relationship with her father. As hope slips away, she seeks to put a permanent end to her pain…

Until an enchanting encounter with a magic man in a dress changes everything.

Given a new chance at life, Emily embarks on a journey with her new BFF, a mysterious clairvoyant, and a band of musicians to stop the monsters that threaten the world. And she may uncover something even more impossible-if she can let go of the past and believe in herself enough to embrace it.

Review

Firstly, thank you to Love Books Tours for inviting me on this one and providing me with a copy of the book.

This book was absolutely bonkers. My original thoughts were that Samantha Rose must have had a dream of all this, woken up in the middle of the night and scribbled it all down. I didn’t know where the narrative was leading me at all so it was a complete surprise. In the beginning I thought I was reading a contemporary novel – here was our protagonist, struggling with her mental health and here was a boy coming to save her but I soon ate my words there were monsters, aliens, mystery and adventure all rolled into one.

Quite quickly into the novel, Emily is involved in the weirdest situation. I don’t think I have ever read a book that flips the story upside down quite like this one. I enjoyed how the characters and narrative kept me guessing and I liked how when it came to saving the world, the human girl didn’t magically get involved and manage to do what the super humans couldn’t. Plus on the opposite side of the spectrum – she didn’t constantly need saving either, sometimes humans need to know when to stay out of the way!

The world today doesn’t make sense and I think that’s the message I got from this story. The world of Emily Adams is that little bit more crazy, but that is what she needed to find herself and settle in a new life. When we first meet Emily, she is lost and looking for a way to end her life. When Lipstick Rick appears and helps her out, she is given a chance and she turns her life around and helps out a lot of people in the process. I think it is just trying to tell us that a little nice can go a long way, sometimes you just need someone to ask if you’re okay.

Throughout the book I was happy with how Emily was represented – I empathised with her a lot. It is realistic to feel like you’re doing things wrong and it is common to feel like you are always in the way – without shouting and screaming about abusive relationships and how these can cause mental health issues, Samantha Rose uses good descriptive paragraphs to put you in Emily’s mindset, she uses a lot of words to get you there though. It made me a little uncomfortable at times but it was a good discomfort – it gave me hope that Emily would come out the other side and grow as a person now that she had found better people to become part of – I’m sure a lot of us can understand that. The friends that Emily makes in the novel were sassy and I was all for the sarcastic retorts which often made me laugh.

I guess it’s ironic that Emily Adam’s ‘very real world’ is an accurate representation of the actual world. I don’t want to say too much more here and ruin this for anyone who hasn’t read it because while I can admire the strangeness of the story I did feel little bit disconnected at times – the narrative felt like it jumped around a lot – some situations came from way out of left field and I did get a little tired towards the end. Lipstick Rick’s speeches are so long and while it is a joke within the novel, I just don’t think we needed so many words.

I gave this book 3 Stars – it was okay, I’m happy to have read it but I wouldn’t read it again. I am interested to see what Samantha Rose thinks up next though.

Goodreads Rating 3 / 5