Stargate Archives

Sunday 10 February 2019

Shattered Dreams: The Shardies War by Bud Sparhawk

Shattered Dreams: The Shardies WarShattered Dreams: The Shardies War by Bud Sparhawk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Humanity went to the stars and found no signs of intelligent technological life, low level animal and plant life was abundant and colonisation went smoothly, they thought they were all alone, they were wrong. The Provance now a simple cargo hauler (formly a decommissioned battle cruiser) flashed alarms after being struck by an unknown force, out in the void a crystalline structure curved around the planet as a blinding light enveloped the colony, with no option to run the ships drives were activated and it jumped to the Morrow system. The warning went out on old fashioned radio (modern communications were down) and the aliens followed, the next victims of an unknown aggressor were the people of Morrow and it didn't end there.

Shattered Dreams: The Shardies War by Bud Sparhawk was funded via kickstarter and I received my copy as a backer. The novel is harder scifi than I usually choose to read leaning more towards strong character development and situation/circumstance over out and out action set pieces. That said the drama works well when combined with the threat of these mysterious aliens and the use of characters seen over decades works surprisingly well. The core of the narrative is how far will you go to survive, we have a handful of people on Morrow, a soldier who was there at the beginning and will be there at the end and finally humanity itself faced with the dilemma that to counter the alien capabilities those who face them will have to lose what they are if any chance of victory is to be achieved. A recommend book but not a overly easily page turner, you have to commit to get the most out of the novel.

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