Ocean of Storms by Christopher Mari, Jeremy K. Brown
47North: 12/1/16
eBook review copy; 400 pages
ISBN-13: 9781503938779
Ocean of Storms by Christopher Mari and Jeremy K. Brown is a so-so science fiction novel.
An explosion on the moon causes an EMP that affects all of the earth. A
deep fissure is now on the Moon's Ocean of Storms and it is believed
that an alien ship long buried on the moon has caused the event. The
effort to get a team who can explore the suspected anomaly on the moon
requires cooperation between the USA and China. Tensions are at an
all-time high globally, so hopefully some answers will calm down the
human race.
This is an interesting mix of sci-fi and thriller. It starts out slow,
so be prepared for a long, slow build up before they actually get to the
moon. After that the novel jolts forward like it is a race to make sure
they have as many varied events occurring as they possibly can in one
novel. This has the novel heading more in the direction of a thriller.
I'm in a quandary over the rating of this one. There are numerous
examples of poor science/no science here. Research would have helped
enormously, especially since many sci-fi readers like real science in
their science fiction. This lack became problematic for me as the errors
mounted. For example, a world-wide EMP (electromagnetic pulse) would
not be an event that we would recover from as easily and quickly as
depicted in Ocean of Storms. Certainly Mari and Brown could have
written this as some other world-wide occurrence and skip calling it an
EMP. As the errors began to add up, I was ready to stop reading. Then
the novel takes this leap and starts running off in a new direction,
which made me realize that Mari and Brown weren't actually writing a
sci-fi novel, they were writing a thriller that needed the sci-fi
elements. This realization lessened my harsh judgement of Ocean of Storms.
It is entertaining. The writing is okay; there are numerous errors in
the science. There was one huge, glaring plot mistake where a character
wasn't in the scene and then suddenly was. I re-read the previous pages
thinking I missed something, but, no, I didn't. All the characters are
caricatures of various standard types. The thriller element tackles more
popular hot topics and a conspiracy. In the final analysis it is an
everything-and-the-kitchen-sink plot peopled with standard characters.
Disclosure:
My advanced reading copy was courtesy
of the publisher/author.
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