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jay9813's review against another edition
5.0
On a mission to save their race from extinction, four aliens leave their home for the first time. Unfortunately for them, they end up on Earth. Facing problem after problem, we follow these characters on their adventure in a hostile world. Although the aliens are in awe of our beautiful planet, they’re bemused and soon disgusted as they begin to learn more about the human race.
I really enjoyed this book and it was never a chore to read. It’s dark, but not miserable; it has some horror elements, but it’s fun and uplifting. Although humans are portrayed in a less than favourable light in this story, the best character is a kind-hearted Earth-dweller named Connor. Likewise, although the alien race have evolved to become non-violent beings, one of the four, Kazi, starts to become power-crazed and dangerous as he absorbs the knowledge of thousands of humans.
And so, Connor slowly becomes far more compassionate than most of his race are capable of, and Kazi rapidly becomes the first of his race (in memory) to show truly hateful behaviour. How will the other aliens and humans react?
Early in the story, the aliens also have to come to terms with the likelihood that their planet and race no longer exist. The book is easily comparable to real-life situations of displacement and emigration. More importantly, it raises mirrors and questions how various societies welcome these individuals.
People of the Sun is an intelligent, exciting science fiction thriller. The story is never predictable, nor does it jump to unbelievable twists. It’s wonderful to read a book in this genre that doesn’t feel like a cheap rip-off of any sci-fi classic (at least, not one that I’ve read!). I definitely recommend giving this a read.
I look forward to reading more by this civil litigator turned sci-fi author!
People of the Sun is published by Sinister Grin Press and is available in paperback and for Kindle. The publishers sent me a copy of the book in exchange for a 100% honest review.
I really enjoyed this book and it was never a chore to read. It’s dark, but not miserable; it has some horror elements, but it’s fun and uplifting. Although humans are portrayed in a less than favourable light in this story, the best character is a kind-hearted Earth-dweller named Connor. Likewise, although the alien race have evolved to become non-violent beings, one of the four, Kazi, starts to become power-crazed and dangerous as he absorbs the knowledge of thousands of humans.
And so, Connor slowly becomes far more compassionate than most of his race are capable of, and Kazi rapidly becomes the first of his race (in memory) to show truly hateful behaviour. How will the other aliens and humans react?
Early in the story, the aliens also have to come to terms with the likelihood that their planet and race no longer exist. The book is easily comparable to real-life situations of displacement and emigration. More importantly, it raises mirrors and questions how various societies welcome these individuals.
People of the Sun is an intelligent, exciting science fiction thriller. The story is never predictable, nor does it jump to unbelievable twists. It’s wonderful to read a book in this genre that doesn’t feel like a cheap rip-off of any sci-fi classic (at least, not one that I’ve read!). I definitely recommend giving this a read.
I look forward to reading more by this civil litigator turned sci-fi author!
People of the Sun is published by Sinister Grin Press and is available in paperback and for Kindle. The publishers sent me a copy of the book in exchange for a 100% honest review.
aly36's review against another edition
5.0
Honestly, at first, I was not sure I would like this book because I am not big on Sci-fi. I don't mind it but some books, in my opinion go too far sometimes, these types of books can be really like or really not like most of the time for me. But I enjoyed this book very much! This book was full of twists and exciting turns that kept me wanting to read more. I like Aliens sometimes but this book made me like them a little more. The characters in this book were trying one civilization. It was an exciting book for me! * I received this from the author---this is my honest review*
ameliaveganreader's review against another edition
5.0
I won this book in a giveaway and I'm so glad I did,because otherwise I might have never had a chance to read it and enjoy it. While I felt disgusted by certain aliens thoughts,I enjoyed everything other than that. Aliens aren't very different from us,they are stronger and can teleport and stuff,but they feel like us,they love like we do and they can be rotten to the core just like some of the human beings that have existed through history or are alive now and shaping our lives and future. Also,the president,that was so good(at least for a while). And the ending! I finished reading the book,but the story doesn't end there,it left me wanting to know more,although I'm still happy the way it was finished.
read_yourself_happy's review
2.0
Jason Parent’s People of the Sun is a science fiction book that takes place in the near future. The book opens with State Trooper Matthew Simpson and his geologist friend Connor Gaudreau hiking through the misty edge of a lake toward a meteorite that landed there. As they approach the object, they notice that the lake has completely evaporated and that the heat is so great that the skin from the corpses of the fish has been cooked off.
The meteorite is not quite what it appears, though. It’s actually a spaceship from the inside of the sun, carrying four aliens, desperate to find resources for their collapsing society. When their ship takes off from the sun, which they call Symoria, there’s some sort of explosion, which causes them to crash into Earth.
Connor and Matt encounter the aliens in the woods near the crash site, where they meet Lenyx, the team’s leader, along with Tryst, Milliken, and Kazi. While the first three understand the importance of getting along with the inhabitants of this new world, Kazi has more sinister goals, his main motivation being to rape Tryst, who is in love with Lenyx.
Connor quickly learns that the aliens are very dangerous. When they come into contact with water, they gain powers, including telekineses, teleportation, and telepathy. They can also kill humans by touching them with their bare skin, usually resulting in the human turning into a pile of ashes.
Despite good intentions, things start to go wrong. At a press conference, Lenyx accidentally turns the American president into a pile of ashes. The government and military go after them, as Connor tries to help them as best he can.
There are definitely things I enjoyed about this book, but there are many more things I found problematic.
One of the things I appreciated was that most of the book is told from the aliens’ point of view. So many science fiction novels are told from the perspective of humans interacting with aliens, so it was refreshing to see something a little different. Although they were multidimensional, I wish the characters had seemed more alien; when the aliens encountered earth and gained their telepathic abilities, they begin to act and think so human that I kept having to remind myself of their extraterrestrial origins.
It was nice that this was a fast-paced book. So many science fiction books tend to be heavy reads, but this one was definitely quick. I finished it in about six hours of reading. That said, I wish there had been more details on the structure of Symoria’s government and culture, as I’m a huge fan of world-building.
Some of the sentences are a little awkward:
“Then it melted and slid down the formation like a pickle smeared in ketchup thrown against a window.”
And then this description of the aliens that I could not, for the life of me, picture in my head:
“Tryst only smiled bigger, so big it covered half her face with four rows of double-pointed teeth, massive fangs retracted behind black gums. Her slim, sinewy lips, so colorless they were nearly transparent, curled beneath her bulbous pink globe eyes. “There’s nowhere else to go but out,” she said, chuckling. As she laughed, her small, hairless snout wiggled in a way Kazi found enticing.”
The reason I was so confused by this description is that, in other parts of the book, they make the aliens seem somewhat human, albeit much larger.
The primary problem I had with this book is that it asks the reader to suspend too much disbelief. Readers of science fiction and fantasy novels are used to doing that, as most books of those genres take a lot of liberty with reality. People of the Sun, however, requires us to believe that there are aliens living in the center of the sun who, once they arrive on earth, have no problem breathing our air. They can subsist on nothing but water. And then, there’s the ending.
I don't want to give away any endings (if you do want to read the full review, check out the post on my blog: https://bit.ly/2NsRTxz), but the ending is what made me give this book 2 stars instead of the three I had been planning.
Overall, there are much better science fiction novels out there.
The meteorite is not quite what it appears, though. It’s actually a spaceship from the inside of the sun, carrying four aliens, desperate to find resources for their collapsing society. When their ship takes off from the sun, which they call Symoria, there’s some sort of explosion, which causes them to crash into Earth.
Connor and Matt encounter the aliens in the woods near the crash site, where they meet Lenyx, the team’s leader, along with Tryst, Milliken, and Kazi. While the first three understand the importance of getting along with the inhabitants of this new world, Kazi has more sinister goals, his main motivation being to rape Tryst, who is in love with Lenyx.
Connor quickly learns that the aliens are very dangerous. When they come into contact with water, they gain powers, including telekineses, teleportation, and telepathy. They can also kill humans by touching them with their bare skin, usually resulting in the human turning into a pile of ashes.
Despite good intentions, things start to go wrong. At a press conference, Lenyx accidentally turns the American president into a pile of ashes. The government and military go after them, as Connor tries to help them as best he can.
There are definitely things I enjoyed about this book, but there are many more things I found problematic.
One of the things I appreciated was that most of the book is told from the aliens’ point of view. So many science fiction novels are told from the perspective of humans interacting with aliens, so it was refreshing to see something a little different. Although they were multidimensional, I wish the characters had seemed more alien; when the aliens encountered earth and gained their telepathic abilities, they begin to act and think so human that I kept having to remind myself of their extraterrestrial origins.
It was nice that this was a fast-paced book. So many science fiction books tend to be heavy reads, but this one was definitely quick. I finished it in about six hours of reading. That said, I wish there had been more details on the structure of Symoria’s government and culture, as I’m a huge fan of world-building.
Some of the sentences are a little awkward:
“Then it melted and slid down the formation like a pickle smeared in ketchup thrown against a window.”
And then this description of the aliens that I could not, for the life of me, picture in my head:
“Tryst only smiled bigger, so big it covered half her face with four rows of double-pointed teeth, massive fangs retracted behind black gums. Her slim, sinewy lips, so colorless they were nearly transparent, curled beneath her bulbous pink globe eyes. “There’s nowhere else to go but out,” she said, chuckling. As she laughed, her small, hairless snout wiggled in a way Kazi found enticing.”
The reason I was so confused by this description is that, in other parts of the book, they make the aliens seem somewhat human, albeit much larger.
The primary problem I had with this book is that it asks the reader to suspend too much disbelief. Readers of science fiction and fantasy novels are used to doing that, as most books of those genres take a lot of liberty with reality. People of the Sun, however, requires us to believe that there are aliens living in the center of the sun who, once they arrive on earth, have no problem breathing our air. They can subsist on nothing but water. And then, there’s the ending.
I don't want to give away any endings (if you do want to read the full review, check out the post on my blog: https://bit.ly/2NsRTxz), but the ending is what made me give this book 2 stars instead of the three I had been planning.
Overall, there are much better science fiction novels out there.
charshorrorcorner's review against another edition
4.0
People of the Sun is a science fiction tale with heart!
Have you ever wondered how the world would react if we ever made "first contact" (to borrow from Star Trek, that's right, I'm a Trekkie), with an alien race? As Dave Matthews asks in his song Time Bomb, "If Martians fell from the sky, what would that do to God? Would we put the weapons down, or aim them up at the sky?" This book has its own way of answering that question.
When we imagine aliens, we might think of little green men, or ET or perhaps "gray men." However we might think of them, we do seem to think of them as all alike. This book addresses the likely fact that they are NOT all the same, that each of them has a personality just as we do. What happens if some of them are good and some are not? Everything becomes that much more complicated, doesn't it?
I'm not going further into the plot because the synopsis and several other reviews already do that. I will say that this book made me think of our likely response,(as a nation), and what I came up with was not pretty. It gets exponentially worse when I think of our response as a WORLD, with all of our different governments, with great and petty leaders alike. I think Mr. Parent's take on all this was realistic and it caused me to think about all of these issues and more.
Even though this was mainly a science-fiction novel, it had elements of horror. It was also well written. A good story entertains, has complex characters and it makes you think. People of the Sun has all that and as such I recommend it!
*Thanks to the author for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This is it. Further, I consider this author to be a friend, but this did not affect the content of my review.*
Have you ever wondered how the world would react if we ever made "first contact" (to borrow from Star Trek, that's right, I'm a Trekkie), with an alien race? As Dave Matthews asks in his song Time Bomb, "If Martians fell from the sky, what would that do to God? Would we put the weapons down, or aim them up at the sky?" This book has its own way of answering that question.
When we imagine aliens, we might think of little green men, or ET or perhaps "gray men." However we might think of them, we do seem to think of them as all alike. This book addresses the likely fact that they are NOT all the same, that each of them has a personality just as we do. What happens if some of them are good and some are not? Everything becomes that much more complicated, doesn't it?
I'm not going further into the plot because the synopsis and several other reviews already do that. I will say that this book made me think of our likely response,(as a nation), and what I came up with was not pretty. It gets exponentially worse when I think of our response as a WORLD, with all of our different governments, with great and petty leaders alike. I think Mr. Parent's take on all this was realistic and it caused me to think about all of these issues and more.
Even though this was mainly a science-fiction novel, it had elements of horror. It was also well written. A good story entertains, has complex characters and it makes you think. People of the Sun has all that and as such I recommend it!
*Thanks to the author for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This is it. Further, I consider this author to be a friend, but this did not affect the content of my review.*
ctgt's review against another edition
3.0
A small group of aliens blast off from their dying world(the center of the sun) and crash land on earth where they discover water enhances their bodies.....sounds a bit like the Superman story doesn't it? The typical problems of first contact, language, culture, history are handled again by exposure to water, in this case they acquire the ability to read humans minds and incorporate all the feelings, memories and experiences into a new understanding of human society and nature.
There are some interesting looks at the dynamics of the small group as the aliens take different approaches to the dramatic changes in their lives. Of course there are the usual concerns of attributing human characteristics to an alien lifeform but there are some hints at a possible reason for this in the ancient past.
Solid writing and an interesting twist at the end made for an entertaining read.
6/10
There are some interesting looks at the dynamics of the small group as the aliens take different approaches to the dramatic changes in their lives. Of course there are the usual concerns of attributing human characteristics to an alien lifeform but there are some hints at a possible reason for this in the ancient past.
Solid writing and an interesting twist at the end made for an entertaining read.
6/10
adrianab's review against another edition
5.0
Since long I did not read a good Sci-Fi. What do we do if we meet some nasty powerful aliens? It's a gripping story.
Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for this copy.
Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for this copy.
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