Reviewed by Toni Adams
Smart Girls Love Scifi Reviewer

For those who prefer to dive deep into science fiction speculation, this is the novel for you. For those who wanted more detail on the 10th Doctor’s definition of time and space, this novel will amuse you to no end.

Reader  is the first novel in the Daughter of Time trilogy. The trilogy just completed in January 2015 with Maker. So if you wanted an intense sci-fi reading binge, you’re welcome.

Weird Al, Merrill, and the other aluminum hat wearing crazies were right. Apparently aliens have been messing with humans for a looooooong time. Humans are pretty worthless except for this one mass in our brains that have potential to allow us to be Readers. Readers are those with the ability to see tendrils in time and space. An ability that goes beyond clairvoyance, it is an ability that is needed to navigate the alien ships through Orbs, access points of travel through space. Humans are then farmed for those with strong Reader abilities and used as a much needed commodity even though their status is pretty much bovine-level.

Out of the humankind, a young girl named Ambra is ripped apart from her family. It seems that she has the potential of a great reader. Taken aboard a hostile alien ship manned by the Dram, she is put through inhumane trials and so many levels of suffering. That is only the first phase of her growth. For Ambra contains power that goes beyond seeing. A power that can change everything, including the past.

This is the type of novel that I could take in increments. The events, theology, and ideas from a sliver of a chapter were intensely dense. So much is packed and yet so much is left to the reader.The writer, Eric Stebbin’s, style is very similar to Michael Crichton. The same dense exposition of theology and science “what-ifs”. Stebbins is a biomedical researcher and it shows. The biological implications of this mass present in all humans was entertaining as heck to a science geek. In between the science, there was a counter balance of action and thrills to keep the story progressing forward.

Overall, it was an impressive body of work. It’s the kind of novel that knocks you back on your mental feet and may prolong the ability to read another book.

There was a hint of a romance which is the focus for the second book. The first issue is all about Ambra and honestly that is enough. This poor girl. By the end of the novel, she is only seventeen. Seventeen and the fate of millions on her hands. The resistance to the Dram, the Xixians, were desperate indeed.

The end of the novel dropped the heavy science fiction aspect and become a really endearing but corny-type of ending. It switches from a Michael Crichton feel to a Neverending Story conclusion.

Actually, now that I think of it….the child-like Empress could have been Ambra…

and….the Xixans could have been using Doctor Who….

“People assume that time is strict progression of cause to effect….but actually..from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff”- 10th Doctor

MIND.BLOWN.

Length:novel
Genre: speculative fiction
Primary Book Format: e-format/hardcover/paperback
Publisher/Imprint: Twice Pi Press
Blush Quotient: None….
Smart Girls Rating:  5

Order it here: Amazon

Find out more info about the author and series here.

(Disclaimer: This book was given for review.)