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The Stars That Beckon

By: Kevin J. Simington
Narrated by: Kevin J. Simington
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Publisher's Summary

A dying world. A desperate mission. An unlikely hero.

In the normal course of events, Zac Perryman was destined to live an unremarkable life and die without leaving more than the faintest ripple in the ocean of humanity’s existence. But the normal course of events was about to be rudely interrupted. As he slept past his alarm on a warm February morning, events were conspiring to derail his ordinary life and sweep him up into a tsunami of cosmic proportions.

Zac becomes part of ragged band of desperate survivors who flee from a dying Earth in search of a new home. Leaving behind a planet that has been decimated by global catastrophe, they set course for a distant star system on board mankind’s only surviving starship. But the universe plays a cruel joke on them. Awakening from cryogenic stasis, they discover that they have not only travelled through space, but through time as well. Now facing even deadlier threats from a strange world, their battle for survival is only just beginning. An exciting, intelligent, fast-paced adventure that spans the galaxy.

If you enjoyed the movies The Martian, Ad Astra, Passengers, Supernova, or Interstellar, you will love this book! Similarly, if you enjoyed the books Children of Time, Winter World, The Enceladus Mission, or any of the classic space-exploration stories by sci-fi masters such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C Clarke, then this is the book for you!

©2019 Kevin J Simington (P)2020 Kevin J Simington

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Bland 1950s white bread tale

The short version: The earth is destroyed by war and a band of plucky survivors manage to reach a new world in a spaceship named "Genesis". The bad guys are rabid Muslims ("The Caliphate") and the survivors are (almost) uniformly white and uniformly straight. They are desperate to get married and have babies.

The long version: The author of this tepid tale is a conservative christian and author of creationist propaganda. His world view permeates the story and offers perspectives that jar to a modern ear. As noted above, the bad guys are fundamentalist Muslims that have somehow managed to conquer about half the planet and are in possession of significant nuclear capabilities ... which they then use to start a nuclear war and turn the earth into slag ...because apparently Allah doesn't like space travel or something. They also have cunning deep-cover agents that manage to infiltrate all the key capabilities of the "Democratic Nations Alliance" and wreak havoc in all deep-space facilities. These agents are [not-ironically] called "UFOs" or "Undercover Faith Operatives".
Anyway, some people manage to get rescued and stuck in an interstellar ship named "Genesis" (why would you call a ship that????) but the saving is selective. Only white people can be saved (apparently) except for one token New Zealander of Hawaiian extraction who is a bit of a god-botherer. Everybody saved is, surprisingly, straight and desperate to get married and have babies. The main protagonist's love interest turns out to be very traditional indeed (no sex before marriage) even when the story takes place four hundred years after the invention of effective oral contraception. She also claims to "be a dove, not a lyre bird:, meaning she is only looking for life-long sexual commitment, Interestingly, in a situation where there are only some 500 humans left alive in the universe, it would make more sense for people to mix their genomes as much as possible, so a "lyre bird" strategy would be best for the colony's long term survival. Also no gay or trans people manage to make it out alive so there are no difficult conversations about lesbians having a duty to procreate regardless so as to help the species survive.
The 1950s attitudes that pervade the book made me think that this story has been sitting in the author's bottom drawer since the days when the USSR was a real threat, and he just dusted it off sometime after 9/11 and did a "global replace" to change the USSR for The Caliphate.

The characters are shallowly written and unmemorable. In fact, most are mere cliches that talk in cliches, with dialogue that drips with 1990s slang and attitudes. The one child that is even given a name is meant to be 11 years old and a maths genius. However, she is written (and sounds) like a five year old with ADHD.

I should make a special mention about the narration, which is done by the book's author. It is *painfully* bad. I got the feeling that Audible was not too sure about this book and thus not willing to invest the money to source a professional narrator. It was not a good decision.

This book is the first of four in the series. I will not be wasting my time with the rest of those.

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