Review - Eclipsing The Aurora by Peter J. Foote
Preamble
I’ve been watching Peter J. Foote bring the Consensus trilogy together owing to my membership with the Genre Writers of Atlantic Canada Facebook group. He was previously a guest on Holy Flamingo Poop (super fun episode). Peter is one of those rare birds – a genuine people person who is invested in making the lives of others better. In our shared neck of the woods, it’s about fellow writers (Peter was the one who started GWOAC). After reading his first self-pubbed novella, Molting of a Queen (review here) I was hungry for more.
A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. It’s either five stars or nothing these days – if I don’t like it, no review. Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.
Take from that what you will.
Review – 5/5
It’s pretty cliché to use the whole ‘it’s x meets y’ when describing a work of art, particularly fiction and movies. With Eclipsing The Aurora, it’s hard not to do so. Sci-fi as a genre can be pretty diverse. What really sold me on this book was that the science fiction stuff was almost window dressing to the meat of the story, which was not at all what I was expecting.
Eclipsing The Aurora is Forrest Gump meets The Fifth Element meets Marvel’s Venom. That’s how I described it originally as I was reading, and I suppose it remains legit now that I’m done. I might even add in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell while I’m at it. Maybe that’s just because the superpowered alien symbiote wearing protagonist goes for a black ops moment on a big ship near the end of the novel.
You might think that what I just described is a teenage boy’s power fantasy, but in reality the story is about some pretty messed up family dynamics, featuring bikers, booze, and drugs. The whole thing feels like a flashback, though in reality it’s largely present day and there is some neural hijinkery going on with an alien jellyfish who has taken up residence in Nigel. A partial amnesiac, Nigel gets birthed out of some kind of alien egg / drop ship by his former friend and one night stand cum (see what I did there) drunken smash piece, Sandra.
Weird, right? The Nigel / Sandra relationship feels like Forrest Gump’s relationship with Jenny, in that she hardly takes the guy seriously yet gets all intimate with him (this time with less late-stage AIDS and fewer unresolved ethical questions about Jenny’s behaviour). Nigel at times feels like a Gumpy simpleton and later in the story seems to grow a brain, though the unevenness can be somewhat explained by what Vivian, Nigel’s passenger, is doing to him. Overall, though, I found Sandra to be a little bit one note in terms of her treatment of Nigel, which was not exactly warranted from what I understood of their relationship. She definitely had a touch of the ‘pants wearing battle axe’ and Nigel seemed all to happy to take his lumps, deserved or not (seemingly mostly the latter).
Aside from (potentially projected) issues regarding the relationship dynamics, I absolutely loved this book. It was human interest through and through, which was not what I was expecting from a sci fi opener, but I was here for it. A fantastic story and well worth your time. I’m looking forward to book two and I don’t think I’ll have to wait long.
Check it out on the ‘zon right heah.