SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen: https://t.co/dx5I6dJP51
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) November 6, 2020
Short Review: 8 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): A Space Opera with a plot that features both interesting ideas and characters as a young boy slave finds a crew and strange ship & seeks revenge in a wild but unjust multiverse where love is often not a matter of free will. Some really good stuff here
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) November 6, 2020
2/3
Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on November 17, 2020 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Nophek Gloss is the debut novel (and first of a trilogy) by author Essa Hansen. It's a Space Opera novel (sort of?), a Vengeance tale, a tale of growing up....it's a lot of things. It's also a novel I'd heard basically nothing about prior to its listing on Netgalley, but I figured I'd give it a shot when I saw it posted.
And well, it's a really interesting novel that made me want more, with some clear limitations. It's an interesting mix of high concept (not my thing) scifi/fantasy and character-focused SF/F (very much my thing), with a main cast that will draw comparisons to many other Sci Fi stories - the book's blurbs reference Firefly, Wayfarers, and Revenger, for instance. And the character work is really interesting, featuring developments that always remain interesting...except they don't always seem to quite follow from the setup that comes before. This is in no way a short book, but it almost feels at times like its missing pages, and yet again, I'm really damn interesting in seeing where this goes next.
Note: The plot summary of this novel is fine on retailers, but it does spoil a plot development that occurs like halfway through the book, which isn't really ideal.
---------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
14 year old Caiden wishes he could simply make things better or at least learn more about the world. Bearing the mechanics' mark after his appraisal, he has been learning how to fix the machines on the place he, his parents, and Leta, the girl he's sort of adopted as a younger sister, live - a place Caiden has never seen beyond. It doesn't look like there will ever be much else for him.
Until the Overseers, the beings who manage their place, bring all of them to a strange place where they are set upon by monstrous creatures. Where Caiden winds up the only survivor, holding only a strange valuable jewel, and a connection to a strange spaceship like nothing anyone has ever seen before. And so he finds himself, and his strange ship - which possesses ancient Graven technology - joining a crew of passagers - most not even human - as they escape what's left of his home into the greater multiverse.
It's a multiverse of beings of more types than Caiden could ever have imagined, with factions with all sorts of different agendas....but only one such faction is responsible for the loss of everything he has ever known. And one he finds that faction, and discovers how untouchable its leader seems to be, Caiden decides that his newfound family is not enough...and that he will do anything for vengeance, even if it reveals more about himself than he ever really wanted to know.....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nophek Gloss features a fascinating setting - a multiverse filled with all different sorts of races and beings, many of whom are just trying to find something in life...and many of whom have joined together for various purposes. The book uses "multiverse" deliberately - ships and beings can travel between different universes - although the travel between them is potentially lethal for certain beings and things - which often have different rules of physics and other aspects that can have massively different effects (and this becomes a very relevant plot point). There are a lot of aliens described within this multiverse, and to be honest its easy to lose track of what is what for most of them, but a few species are particularly memorable and interesting to read.
It also features a group of really interesting characters. You have Caiden of course, the young boy who loses everything and is desperate for revenge, but also isn't quite sure what that's making him. He also doesn't know what to do with this new crew that might be a second family and between that, his maturity, and his guilt and discomfort over everything, he's a compelling lead character. But the rest of the major crew is generally well done, especially En, a human who is so mechanically augmented they can change their own form and gender seemingly at will (for the first chapter we meet En, En uses "he" but for nearly the rest of the book En uses "she") and despite En's own recklessness, they're such a great parental figure to Caiden you have to love them. But the rest of the crew is mainly pretty interesting in their pasts and personalities - or well, what we get to see of them.
That's really the problem here: a large part of the plot is based upon Caiden's character development and his connection to the crew, but the time we see Caiden with them is almost too short - especially for some of them - for the bonds that are supposed to exist to feel real. And we don't know enough about some of them honestly, even if the parts we do know are really strong (En and perhaps the pilot Taitn are the exceptions here). The same is true of Caiden's own internal plot development, which has some shifts towards the final third that just feel like they come from nowhere, even if I enjoyed the character that came out of them. It all feels like there was missing pages from the book where this development took a slightly slower route all around, and had more connective tissue.
The same is not true of the cast's other major player, the antagonist name Threi, who has his own agenda for Caiden that Caiden can't help but get involved in - despite him hating nearly all of what Threi represents. He's an absolutely great part of this story, and helps the plot move along despite the lack of connective tissue for parts. And really what a plot, with some really strong twists along the way, to go with some really strong themes, in particular themes about Consent: for beings with DNA from the long-dead Graven race have the ability to force love/devotion upon subjects of most races, and the more powerful such beings absolutely do abuse such an ability - something that disgusts and terrifies Caiden when he gets his own glimpse at having that power. The book's ending is kind of strange, with the main sequence ending with a significant page length left to go, leading to two final twists to help setup the next book in the trilogy.
Yet those twists are well done, and the themes here are excellently executed - and even without the connective tissue to make them fully believable, I did really like the characters overall. So I really badly do want to see where this book goes from here. And I hope others will check this one out too, it's worth it, despite its flaws.
And well, it's a really interesting novel that made me want more, with some clear limitations. It's an interesting mix of high concept (not my thing) scifi/fantasy and character-focused SF/F (very much my thing), with a main cast that will draw comparisons to many other Sci Fi stories - the book's blurbs reference Firefly, Wayfarers, and Revenger, for instance. And the character work is really interesting, featuring developments that always remain interesting...except they don't always seem to quite follow from the setup that comes before. This is in no way a short book, but it almost feels at times like its missing pages, and yet again, I'm really damn interesting in seeing where this goes next.
Note: The plot summary of this novel is fine on retailers, but it does spoil a plot development that occurs like halfway through the book, which isn't really ideal.
---------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
14 year old Caiden wishes he could simply make things better or at least learn more about the world. Bearing the mechanics' mark after his appraisal, he has been learning how to fix the machines on the place he, his parents, and Leta, the girl he's sort of adopted as a younger sister, live - a place Caiden has never seen beyond. It doesn't look like there will ever be much else for him.
Until the Overseers, the beings who manage their place, bring all of them to a strange place where they are set upon by monstrous creatures. Where Caiden winds up the only survivor, holding only a strange valuable jewel, and a connection to a strange spaceship like nothing anyone has ever seen before. And so he finds himself, and his strange ship - which possesses ancient Graven technology - joining a crew of passagers - most not even human - as they escape what's left of his home into the greater multiverse.
It's a multiverse of beings of more types than Caiden could ever have imagined, with factions with all sorts of different agendas....but only one such faction is responsible for the loss of everything he has ever known. And one he finds that faction, and discovers how untouchable its leader seems to be, Caiden decides that his newfound family is not enough...and that he will do anything for vengeance, even if it reveals more about himself than he ever really wanted to know.....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nophek Gloss features a fascinating setting - a multiverse filled with all different sorts of races and beings, many of whom are just trying to find something in life...and many of whom have joined together for various purposes. The book uses "multiverse" deliberately - ships and beings can travel between different universes - although the travel between them is potentially lethal for certain beings and things - which often have different rules of physics and other aspects that can have massively different effects (and this becomes a very relevant plot point). There are a lot of aliens described within this multiverse, and to be honest its easy to lose track of what is what for most of them, but a few species are particularly memorable and interesting to read.
It also features a group of really interesting characters. You have Caiden of course, the young boy who loses everything and is desperate for revenge, but also isn't quite sure what that's making him. He also doesn't know what to do with this new crew that might be a second family and between that, his maturity, and his guilt and discomfort over everything, he's a compelling lead character. But the rest of the major crew is generally well done, especially En, a human who is so mechanically augmented they can change their own form and gender seemingly at will (for the first chapter we meet En, En uses "he" but for nearly the rest of the book En uses "she") and despite En's own recklessness, they're such a great parental figure to Caiden you have to love them. But the rest of the crew is mainly pretty interesting in their pasts and personalities - or well, what we get to see of them.
That's really the problem here: a large part of the plot is based upon Caiden's character development and his connection to the crew, but the time we see Caiden with them is almost too short - especially for some of them - for the bonds that are supposed to exist to feel real. And we don't know enough about some of them honestly, even if the parts we do know are really strong (En and perhaps the pilot Taitn are the exceptions here). The same is true of Caiden's own internal plot development, which has some shifts towards the final third that just feel like they come from nowhere, even if I enjoyed the character that came out of them. It all feels like there was missing pages from the book where this development took a slightly slower route all around, and had more connective tissue.
The same is not true of the cast's other major player, the antagonist name Threi, who has his own agenda for Caiden that Caiden can't help but get involved in - despite him hating nearly all of what Threi represents. He's an absolutely great part of this story, and helps the plot move along despite the lack of connective tissue for parts. And really what a plot, with some really strong twists along the way, to go with some really strong themes, in particular themes about Consent: for beings with DNA from the long-dead Graven race have the ability to force love/devotion upon subjects of most races, and the more powerful such beings absolutely do abuse such an ability - something that disgusts and terrifies Caiden when he gets his own glimpse at having that power. The book's ending is kind of strange, with the main sequence ending with a significant page length left to go, leading to two final twists to help setup the next book in the trilogy.
Yet those twists are well done, and the themes here are excellently executed - and even without the connective tissue to make them fully believable, I did really like the characters overall. So I really badly do want to see where this book goes from here. And I hope others will check this one out too, it's worth it, despite its flaws.
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