Genre: Sci-Fi, Colonization, Mystery
Reviewer: Scott
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About The Book
Fernando Vargas, seventeen years old, is dead. Thorny, an infamous girl his age, is missing. The storm that has been gathering on the planet called Heaven, a harsh world seventy-six light-years from Earth, is about to break.
Gossip, rumors, and accusations about Fernando’s death escalate as the planet’s sole and overworked physician is unable to provide a reason. Thorny’s father, a former mercenary soldier, is intent on finding his difficult but beloved daughter, because no one can survive for long in Heaven’s wilds. He will need to find not only her but also Dani, another teenaged boy, who is chasing an impossible love story he will risk his life to have.
The small colony of humans that arrived on Heaven two decades earlier has managed to survive, but nobody is happy. The mystery of what happened to the two teens exposes the simmering feuds, hatreds, regrets, and personal agendas of the struggling colonists. Only a few recognize the precarious state of the settlement and strive to make it secure. Others see an opportunity to seize power.
A mysterious death, a disappearance, dangerous rites of passage, and a possible coup in an isolated interstellar colony create a thrilling and toxic brew. Is there any way to avoid disaster? A science fiction story of coming of age, adventure, danger, mystery, and a bit of hope.
This book is set in the same universe as the Leif the Lucky series and picks up the stories of the characters who stayed behind when Leif returned to Earth at the end of Murder Under Another Sun.
The Review
I’m a big fan of the “Leif the Lucky” series by Colin Alexander. It’s really cool – it takes the idea of time delayed space exploration, where Leif travels from Earth to other worlds and back, and uses each different book in the series to write a different sub genre of science fiction.
In the first one, Starman’s Saga, it’s a classic exploration/colonization story. In the second, Murder Under Another Sun, it’s a science fiction mystery. There was a murder at the heart of it, and in the end, the colonists were left to fend for themselves, abandoned by an Earth with its own troubles.
Alexander finished that series recently, and if you haven’t read it yet, you really have to. It is outstanding.
But then he did something unexpected. He went back to that second planet, Heaven, and gave us a look at what’s happening 20 years after the events of the original book.
True to its DNA, this one is also a mystery, and starts with a murder. Several of the original book’s characters feature prominently, especially Reality Busby, and Penny and her husband Vo Hiep, who have a whole brood of children.
The most fascinating of these kids is Thorny, who is, as her name implies, extremely prickly. She’s in that awkward adolescent phase, and is very unhappy with who she is as a person and the traits she inherited from her parents. She’s prone to running away from her problems – really running away – instead of facing them.
Now one of the senior students is dead, and everyone thinks Thorny has something to do with it. She runs into the wilderness in a stolen rover, and her friend/guy who has a crush on her Danijel goes after, followed closely by her father.
In the background to the primary action, the colony s buzzing with politics and devision, with city folk against the valley, and those in favor of equal shares against those in favor of a monetary system that would help provide a work ethic. Oh, and the originals, who all have chips in their heads and old timer attitudes, are in conflict with the younger Heaven-born generation.
Alexander does a stellar job of painting this future colony and alien world in all its glory and ugliness. I really enjoyed seeing this world again two decades later, and getting a glimpse into how a society is quickly developing that’s radically different from Earth.
And the ending was very satisfying, while leaving things open for another book set on Heaven. Even if this Heaven is sometimes a bit more like hell, there are moments in the book of transcendent beauty.
If you have a chance, pick up the original series, and then read this one too. You won’t be disappointed.
The Reviewer
Scott is the founder of Queer Sci Fi, Liminal Fiction, and QueeRomance Ink, and a fantasy and sci fi writer in his own right, with more than 30 published short stories, novellas and novels to his credit, including two trilogies.