Thursday, October 1, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Annihilation Aria by Michael R Underwood


Annihilation Aria is the first in a new space opera series by Michael R Underwood.  I'd skipped the book when it first came out, as the title and cover screamed "generic space opera" to me.  But enough promotion by authors I like on twitter, as well as the description of it as a Space Opera featuring a found family put the book back on my radar, and when it showed up as a Hoopla Audiobook, I gave it a shot.

And Annihilation Aria is a really solid and enjoyable space opera novel, with a setup that very much feels like a mashup of multiple other media - Farscape, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc - but that comes together to form its own very enjoyable story.  The three main characters and the main point of view antagonist are very well done, and the story takes a few twists and turns that, while never shocking, are always pulled off well.  It's not really a standout novel in any way, but it's well executed and fun while tackling some serious themes to a minor extent, so worth your time if you're looking for enjoyable space opera.

Note:  I read Annihilation Aria as an Audiobook all the way through.  The audiobook has two different readers - a male reader for the two male points of view and a female reader for the female points of view, and they're both okay.  In an unfortunate choice however, both readers read out the dialogue of several alien races with those specific alien races sharing common verbal tics (not accents, but like one alien race ends every sentence with "hmmm" and another with a sniffle like it has a cold).  These verbal tics ARE NOT in the text, which honestly makes their annoyingness worse, and so I'd recommend you AVOID the audiobook.

Note2:  Also, as I read this in audiobook form, I apologize for any misspellings of characters/places below.


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------------
Max, Lahra and Wheel are the three person team behind the small starship known as the "Kettle."

Max, a human from Earth (and Lahra's husband) who stepped on an alien artifact and found himself transported entirely across the galaxy, uses his knowledge of archaeology and anthropology to loot ancient Atlan tombs.

Lahra, one of the few survivors of the Genae race (and Max's wife), a race of warriors with a strict caste system, provides the muscle, using her physical prowess and her battle songs to ensure that Max and the Kettle are able to survive the traps and other beings they find throughout space.

Wheel, a modern descendant of the Atlan race, uses her cybernetics to fly the Kettle and to keep the lovebirds - as she calls Max and Lahra - flying throughout space to where they need to go, all the while keeping tabs on her revolutionary lover by long-term com.

Doing what the three of them do in this galaxy is dangerous enough on its own - it isn't made easier by the evil Vsenk Imperium, which rules the galaxy with an iron fist and suppresses any knowledge that there was ever a time they didn't ever do so - knowledge found in the tombs the trio search through.  But when the trio finds three artifacts inside a long dead tomb, they find themselves desperately on the run from a Vsenk noble, and survival - not just of themselves, but of the whole galaxy - has never seemed more unlikely.....
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Annihilation Aria has clear inspirations from a number of SF/F properties.  Max is lost in a far away galaxy ala Farscape, Max and Lahra form a team like Peter/Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, Max is an archaeologist tomb raider finding powerful artifacts like Indiana Jones, an evil empire like in Star Wars, etc etc.  And yet the book never feels really derivative at all, combining these elements and its own work character & world building into something that feels truly its own.  The story does that by jumping between the points of views of four characters - the main trio as well as the most prominent antagonist, a Vsenk noble named Arik.

And they all work rather well in their own ways.  While Max/Lahra may be inspired by Peter/Gamora, Max is very different from Star-Lord, far more the intellectual archaeologist driven by knowledge as much as the dream of getting back home - he's not a dashing rogue, he's just a very good tomb raider/scholar who can't help when his curiosity gets him into trouble.  Moreover, unlike Star-Lord from GotG, he's very willing to defer to Lahra and to admit that she could be right to the point where the one time in the book they have a major argument over a plan of action it's a big deal rather than something that happens all the time.  This makes him a far more interesting character and one who is damn easy to root for, especially as a foil for Lahra.

Lahra meanwhile has to deal with the conflict between what she knows of her people's caste system and her heritage and her love of Max - since her people historically would not appreciate the idea that Lahra would make a pact/charge relationship with a non Genae.  And without spoiling anything, the book sets her loyalty to her heritage and its caste system against her need to do good and to fight for the ideals of her people, and seeing how she responds just makes her a fun and interesting heroine who you just want to root for.

And even the other two point of view characters, who don't get nearly the same amount of interesting development, have strong attributes in this one.  Wheel is pretty fun even though she doesn't have a major plot arc, with there being little conflict for her to do, but her feelings towards her ship and her revolutionary lover work well enough.  And Arik, the antagonist who belongs to a more "reformist" faction of the evil Empire - and by reformist I mean wanting to rule by persuasion more than sheer force even if he is just as prejudiced at heart as most of his people - is really interesting to read and I hope we haven't seen the last of him at the end of this one.

All of these characters develop over the course of a plot that takes some not surprising but still well done twists and turns, and features some of the classic features of space opera.  So you have small space battles, small arms battles, battles with aliens in space, ginormous living space-beings, etc etc etc.  There's a lot of space opera out there that simply takes place in a space setting and then doesn't feature much more than that, but that's not the case here.  And while this is the first part of a series, it ends in a satisfying way, making it good for anyone who just wants a stand alone instead of a series.

Again nothing about this book is really stand out great - the characters are fun to read, but we don't deal with serious themes, and the action isn't THAT great even if it's strong enough.  But again it's fun space opera that I did not regret reading even if it isn't unique enough to make it near a must read, and that's something on its own.

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