Bookworm Speaks!- New Paradigm by Michael Powers

Bookworm Speaks!

New Paradigm

by Michael Powers

****

This book was received through Word Slinger Publicity in exchange for an honest review. 

The Story: Outer space may not be the solution to all of Earth’s problems, but for the ten thousand people aboard the colony ship Paradigm, it holds their future—for better or worse.

After three years journeying through the cosmos, Captain Sean Paser lands on the fourth planet in a previously undiscovered solar system. As the colonists begin to settle their new home, however, they become aware that there is non-human life on one of the other planets, a highly advanced race known as the Watchers. 

Meanwhile, other planets are becoming mysteriously bereft of life. The strange attacks eliminate living creatures entirely, while material objects such as buildings and bridges fully intact. Can the New Paradigm work with the Watchers to find who or what is behind the destruction before their own planets are assaulted? 

The Good: As the need for a genuine presence in outer space becomes more and more prudent if the human race is to continue to flourish, colonization of outer space may become a reality in the coming decades and centuries (Come on NASA!). Like many scientific advances, fiction will be the way towards the first tests, away to explore how humanity might take those first steps into a large universe. 

The ideas that the author has in regards to said undertaking are quite creative and make a lot of practical sense. One of the most important one is the idea of open sexuality among the colonists. The most important factors in any grand venture is unity among the participants and it is hard to deny that institution of marriage, while undoubtably very important, is a catalyst for friction. Making such things more fluid can relax such boundaries and creating relationships based on trust can lead to unity. It is a very compelling hypothesis. 

It was also refreshing to see the large timescale on which the story takes place. The story chronicles the first one-hundred years of the colony’s existence. The children born on the journey grow up into productive citizens and the slowly push the boundaries of their original homes. 

The Flaws: While lofty ideals could be taken away from this text, the fact of the matter is that the execution of said ideals is sorely lacking. 

This book is poorly written, there is no nice way of saying otherwise. The majority of the text is just one long explanation of what is going one at the present moment, devoid of any real character or even that much of a story. It’s a story written in the vein of textbooks, many pages are just one long lecture on how the ships works and/or the basic social structure of the colony. That, in of itself is not uninteresting. Bookworm owns several books which are pretty much encyclopedias on various science fiction franchises and one his hobbies is reading wikis. In the case of this book, it should have gone all out. Make it: “A Treatise on the Foundation of the New Paradigm Extrasolar Planetary Colony.” That could have been interesting, an encyclopedia from the future an all that, but that is not what happens here, unfortunately. A novel is attempted to be placed all over the exposition and the whole suffers. Exposition can work if done right and it is not done right in this story and it bores the reader. The key to good storytelling is showing not telling, and all this book does is tell. 

The best way to show and not tell is to view the story through the eyes of the character and that falls flat. Bookworm can barely remember any of the characters. They were almost exactly the same and only the adjectives seemed to change. Personality is the name of the game and all of these characters were devoid of that. They were just names that the book explained what happened to them. 

Overall, the whole story was too easy. While some conflict tried to be introduced, it is extremely smoothed over and lacks any real substance that the reader can sink their teeth into. The colonists get along like one, big, happy family with no factional conflict that always occurs when you get even a few dozen people together, even worse with ten thousand. The idea of open marriages is good, as mentioned above, but even then, it could lead to jealousy. 

The planet the ship lands on is Eden. There tries to be a conflict with some of the native wildlife, but its just another monster. Things that are too small to see are for more vicious killers that big, hairy things. Not even Earth has ever been so kind, and humanity evolved here. 

Later in the book, there tries to be some great conflict to juice it all up but it ultimately falls flat with its lack of description and emotional depth. One of the female characters becomes some sort of chosen one for the Watchers but the ways its described in the book is pretty much the same as the preceding sentence. 

Even the sex scenes are not compelling. They are a written in a very clinical manner. Needless to say, Bookworm did not get aroused when reading them, he was counting the pages until they ended. Sex scenes, can be tricky when writing a novel. A good approach to take is: “less is more” the sex scenes in this book are a little too explicit. They do not really feel natural and more like pornography. More focus is needed on what the characters are feeling rather than what motions they are taking to achieve their goal. 

Final Verdict: Like the mission it describes, this book sets out with lofty goals in mind but unlike the way it goes in the book, the mission is plagued with difficulties. 

Two out of Five Stars

thecultureworm.blogspot.com