Fantasy/Sci-Fi Lovin' GIVEAWAYS!

(I'm going to try something new with this review, since SQT does something I don't and I figure I should give it a shot.)

Are you sure about this? Chris Keating asked himself. he reminded himself. If this works, it changes everything. All the dreams of the First Landers, overthrown in an instant. Contact with Earth. Marseguro a colony, not an independent world...no more Selkies, No more second-class "landlings," becoming more second-class every year as the Selkies breed like the animals they are. No more men like my father being murdered by the Selkie masters. A chance to return to Earth, where real humans belong...a chance to find something better to do with my life than cataloging algae samples and scrubbing growth tanks.
Chris remembered the Selkies throwing him off the pier just to watch him flounder, just to humiliate him, just to mock him.
He remembered his father, lost at sea.
He remembered his mother, dying in a hospital long cut off from the latest medical advances.
He remembered her words to him, just yesterday morning...
"The Selkies murdered him...and now they're killing me...they'll kill you too, my boy..."
He blinked hard twice. "Not me," he said, and flicked the switch on the Emergency Insterstellar Transmitter...
--Excerpt from Marseguro by Edward Willett

Willett's novel of religion gone horribly wrong is a "monster" of a tale (pun intended). It takes place some 50 years after a man named Victor Hansen stole an Earth ship (or Body Purified Ship), fled across the galaxy, and established a new colony for he and his modified mer-people called the Selkies. The problem is that he's pissed off all of the Body Purified in doing so, and they are still actively trying to find him and his "abominations" so they can be "purified" (a.k.a. killed a la the same way that Philip K. Dick meant "retire" in that famous androids book we all know). You see, the Body Purified is like conservative religion gone absolutely insane (and we're not talking about what you might call insane today, but more like what we would call insane in the middle ages). Anything that isn't human is deemed an abomination and must be "purified", and there is a strict (and that's an understatement) moral code that all Body Purified members must follow. It's a nasty religion, to say the least. Even clones aren't human and must be destroyed (and if you screw up somehow, you could find yourself in a not-so-happy position yourself). And all of this is awesome and chilling at the same time.

The novel starts off slow, and probably a little slow for me, but once it gets going at around 60 or so pages in, it just doesn't let up. The action and pace move perfectly from that point on. And when it ends, you're left wanting more (Willett better have an awesome sequel in mind, because the ending does leave it open for one). I wonder what a war within the Body Purified would like and I imagine it would be nothing short of "badass". The way Willett has pulled together military technology into this story is fantastic. It's like space opera and military SF got together and had a love child, or something equally as fascinating.

Marseguro has a rather large cast of characters, which was an issue at first for me, mostly because of the slow start. Once things get moving the characters fit together better. Emily (a Selkie) and Richard Hansen (member of the Body Purified, kind of) have a good amount of "face time" and I feel like I got to know them well enough to make them likable characters, and interesting characters to boot. Chris Keating really could have used more space, I think. I feel like Willett wanted me to hate Keating (or at least dislike him), but I was more or less ambiguous about the boy. If that was the intention, then good, but the farther you get into the novel, the more Keating does things that are clearly bad, but for me, I found those thing to all be strangely justified, even if they were wrong. This is in part due to what we learn about Keating. It's hard to not understand why he is doing things. The other characters fit into their roles fine, but were mostly there to provide different POVs for what goes on in the novel. You remember them, but mostly you focus on Richard and Emily, which is the intent I imagine.

The only major flaw I found with the story, as I said, was that it started slow. Maybe it was that things didn't seem to be interesting at first, or perhaps there were too many characters in the beginning. Thankfully it picked up and dragged me kicking and screaming into the whirlwind of the last 300+ pages (I mean this in a good way). Willett's writing shares an even balance between showing and telling, which is good. I find that SF tends to tell more than fantasy, or at least it's more obvious, but the way that Willett tells things (or gives info) doesn't detract from the story, in my opinion. Mostly the information is interesting or useful, and anything that doesn't make sense at first, comes crashing into "sense-land" by the end of the novel when you realize just how nuts the Body Purified really is. The only other flaw I can say exists is that the Body Purified, or at least certain members of it, are far too arrogant for their own good. There comes a point where I wondered if they would figure out they're being really dumb, but they never do. Perhaps this serves to show that being too obsessed with a cause is ultimately not a good way to live and perhaps I'm just too optimistic for my own good to think that humans would learn eventually. However, now I think, that that Willett's novel is just a perfect example of human arrogance and that it isn't a flaw after all (well, at least not a writing flaw, but certainly a clear example of a human flaw).

In a way, I am thankful that Willett didn't turn this book in a soppy love story in the end (he started to set up for something like that, but it's left a little ambiguous in the final chapter, at least to me). I think given all that happens in this story, having a big love affair take place at the end would have made everything that happened before seem a little cheap. But that's me, and again, Willett didn't do this. He did the right thing (there's evidence of a love affair, but he doesn't really describe it, which is better, in my opinion).

All in all I think Marseguro is a good space opera/military SF piece. It certainly has a couple flaws, but if you like this genre, or just find the premise interesting, I don't think you'll disappointed. It's an action-packed ride filled with creepy creatures with gills. How can you go wrong with that, right? Willett writes well enough to make sure you aren't pulled out of the story by weird POV things or odd wording, which is good, because being pulled out of the action would not be good at all. You'll find this book also grapples with some serious issues (particularly the issue of organized religion and what happens if it gets too much power), but does have a little bit of a light-hearted side. It's not all serious. Definitely a good book. I keep getting lucky and reading good things. Either I'm really easy to please, or the publishers have me pegged really good (or SQT does, since she sent me this book). If you'd like to get a taste of the book you can go here to read the first two chapters, or maybe check out his other work too.

And with that, here ends my review. BPS Awesome out! (Willett might get that joke).