Wednesday, November 13, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Finder by Suzanne Palmer




Finder is a space opera novel by Suzanne Palmer.  It may be part of a series (Amazon now lists it with a series subtitle), but it's entirely stand-alone as a novel.  I say the novel is space opera because it features a SF universe featuring multiple planets, travel through space, and scifi devices and weaponry, but the story has traces of the spy, noir, and action novel genres as well.

That said, the book has as many down moments as ups, which prevents it from being overall anything particularly special.  The story verges into silliness at more than a few moments, but it's never really a comedy overall, so some of these stories kind of stand out awkwardly - and our protagonist's competence seems to waiver with the plot's demands.  It's still a fun romp for much of it, but the book's repetitive use of certain tropes and the awkward humor prevent it from really reaching any higher levels beyond average.

Note: I read this as an audiobook.  The reader is fine if not anything special, but if you're considering the book in the audiobook format,

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Fergus Ferguson comes to the Cernee space colony - a colony situated near the farthest corner of human-known space - on a dangerous but not necessarily complicated job: to take back a spaceship known as Venetia's Sword from the man who stole it.  That man, Arum Gilger, was supposed to be a leader of a small gang of thugs in the system, but when Fergus arrives he finds that intel to be badly wrong: Gilger is a thug all right, but has amassed enough power to become one of the major powers in the area.  And just by sheer bad luck, Fergus finds himself almost killed by Gilger as soon as he arrives in system....and things only get worse from there, with the system being pulled into all out war shortly thereafter.

But Fergus has a job to do, and damned if he isn't going to do it.  To do so, he'll ally himself with some strange partners: a young woman from a group of clones, a friendly local arms dealer, and even the local governor.  But even with their help, staying alive through this whole situation long enough to accomplish his job - or just staying alive in general - is going to be near impossible.  And that's without taking into account the mysterious dangerous aliens hanging out in the area and taking an interest in the proceedings......
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Finder is told entirely from Fergus' point of view in the third person, and features a universe with some pretty interesting aspects: aliens whom humanity has had contact and some relations with, aliens who humanity fear as cryptic and unknowable, and human settlements on worlds and systems filled with all sorts of governments - for example, part of the story's background includes a Mars under control of a Fascist outsider government - and that's mainly background information.  And the main setting, Cernee, is a crazy mess of space stations, small space habitation areas (Habs), and asteroids and spaceships, with people of all sorts being involved.

In the middle of this is Fergus, who is a solid if uninspiring main character - a guy who has had a rough time with heroism in the past and now just wants at first to get in, steal back his ship, and get out of the system.  But his own morals won't let him just do that, as you might imagine, so he gets caught up in far more than that.  And Fergus is a competent character - he's not some action hero, but he's innovative with his ideas - even if they tend to be some pretty crazy ideas (more on that in a bit) - and quick thinking, and his actions make him a pretty fine hero for the story to revolve around.

And it's a solid story with some fun action here and there and some interesting twists and turns for sure.  The rest of the characters are solid, if unexceptional, and you'll foresee some of their development early enough, but they work.  Still, it's never really a story that stands out in how it works.

More annoyingly, it's a story that features a number of things that get a bit annoying and prevent it from really being a pretty strong one.  For one, the story ventures into silliness at times - especially with Fergus' plans - and yet it tries to still take a serious tone, never venturing into actual comedy.  It breaks some of the narrative really, as the tones clash.  For another, Fergus' competence seems to vary as the narrative demands, with him at one point acting incredibly stupid in a way that only serves to cause a new conflict too advance the plot.  And as a last point, certain events in the narrative happen over and over to the point of being distracting - such as Fergus winding up unconscious and blacking out, finding himself captured, or getting misidentified, etc.

Again, I don't mean to make the story seem bad, it DOES work, and the plot is cohesive enough and enjoyable in its action to be a solid story.  But these problems are clear and make it so that there's a lot of other works I'd recommend trying first instead.
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