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A review by joelteon
The Stars Within by Alex Arch
4.0
Once again I have a novella review from the SFINCS competition. This time for The Stars Within by Alex Arch. Split between two POVs, Thomas and Colette, the chapters share fifty percent of the storytime between each character. Thomas, discovering he has cancer for the second time, questions why he sentenced his pregnant wife to such a miserable life on a lowly mining world. While starship Captain, Colette, is tasked with delivering a bomb to the centre of humanity's enemy, The Radiants.
'What did a fool like me do to deserve such a brilliant star?'
The writing was a bit clunky and a lot of the time that broke my immersion. But the story was exciting and appealing enough to overcome many of the hiccups in the text. I wanted to know what happened to both Thomas and Colette and how these two disparite storylines converged.
The writing did sharpen up a lot after the first third and I am so happy to say that the expected outcome wasn't what actually happened. No one should spoil a good twist and The Stars Within ends with a very good twist.
Alex Arch has shown some serious skill even with the slight hiccups in his prose. I can feel the emotion he left on the page from his real life experiences with cancer in his family. If Alex continues to write he will become a popular name in the Indie SFF world.
I wish Alex the best of luck in these last few weeks of the SFINCS competition. It's going to be a very tight race for those ten finalist slots!
Check out the review on my blog here. And my full site here.
Rating: 4/5
'What did a fool like me do to deserve such a brilliant star?'
The writing was a bit clunky and a lot of the time that broke my immersion. But the story was exciting and appealing enough to overcome many of the hiccups in the text. I wanted to know what happened to both Thomas and Colette and how these two disparite storylines converged.
The writing did sharpen up a lot after the first third and I am so happy to say that the expected outcome wasn't what actually happened. No one should spoil a good twist and The Stars Within ends with a very good twist.
Alex Arch has shown some serious skill even with the slight hiccups in his prose. I can feel the emotion he left on the page from his real life experiences with cancer in his family. If Alex continues to write he will become a popular name in the Indie SFF world.
I wish Alex the best of luck in these last few weeks of the SFINCS competition. It's going to be a very tight race for those ten finalist slots!
Check out the review on my blog here. And my full site here.
Rating: 4/5