Aphelion

Interesting tale, full of action and grit.<br><br><br>This a story that starts slow, but finishes fast--perhaps too fast. The Phoenix Dome storyline is vague and undefined, like the writer was feeling around, trying to get a sense of his own story. (We all do it, I'm afraid. If we're lucky, we can keep it. If not, we chop it out and use the part after that, or re-write.)<br><br>I think this one had too many settings. First, the readers take in the Phoenix Dome world, and then just as we get a handle on that, we're in Earth Orbit Station 6. Suddenly, we're transitioning in a Saturn Tours ship. We just start getting into this setting and Thad's misdirection play in the ship's bowels, when we jump to Jupiter Orbiter. This was supposed to be Thad's home base, but instead of playing out here, the story jumps again to a poorly-described ship owned by his friend, Jenkins.<br><br>All that wasn't needed. The entire ending sequence could have played out fine in the Orbiter. I'm sure it had pods for ejecting unwanted thugs, too. Likewise, the EOS 6 bits could have played out on the Saturn Tour clipper. <br><br>And yes, using all the senses to describe things would have helped.<br><br>There was a host of interesting characters, from Thad, Yanimi, Stachle, and Di, to Jenkins and even Masterson, although he only had a bit part. However, I think a clear, repeating villain would have helped the drama. If you want the corrupt, controlling manager as the bad guy (ala the movie Outland), he's got to be in the story more often to have that impact. Finally, if Masterson is to be the last man standing against him, villainous fighting skills need to be introduced earlier, for the tension. <br><br>Example: Disney's movie The Three Musketeers. (No, not Mouseketeers!) The near-end battle with Captain Rochefort is heavy with tension because we've seen that he's hell on wheels with a blade. Now, picture if he had just walked in at the end after never having seen him in action. The tension disappears, and we just see him as a momentary obstacle to be done in to move on.<br><br>This transitions well into my next point, about plot and resolution. After following the hero this far, having seen him take on groups of thugs and engineer fake disasters to circumvent security... the climax is frightfully short, and empty-handed. Masterson and his goons board the vessel. They are quickly delt with, leaving only Masterson. Here, I was looking forward to a whale of a fight between good and evil. But only two paragraphs later, he's dead and the story is wrapping up.<br><br>The action and fight sequences were good, but it was too little for me.<br><br>More voices for the characters would have helped. I'd suggest some with short, choppy lines, somebody who repeats himself all the time, or someone who always mumbles. Maybe one with a British accent, like Masterson, to make him seem more sophisticated and evil (Hey, that's how Hollywood does it). Anything that can be done to make all the characters speak in different tones, helps.<br><br><br>I'm a hard sell, and maybe another reader may see it differently. In either case, keep at it. I'm sure the worlds described in this story can provide a marvelous backdrop for a host of tales.<br><br>Nate

Hmm. 'Coraku' = transliteration of Japanese word derived from 'crack'? We see some cyberpunk influence here (a strong Japanese / Chinese thread in the solar-system spanning culture; powerful and ruthless corporations and possibly corrupt government agencies), and some Joe Haldemanesque military / veterans angles.<br><br>Thad and his fellow survivors of an apparently disastrous Europa operation have made themselves disappear into the dingier cracks and crevices underlying a shiny and prosperous world, and only learn by accident that the most traumatic experience of their lives was deliberately engineered ...<br><br>Mr. Hemsley takes pains (as I did, and as John R. Murray did, in our respective Nightwatch stories) to address the mechanics of getting from here to there. Doing so serves the purpose of showing the extent of human activity in the solar system -- hopping from Phoenix (presumably a domed version of Phoenix, AZ) to an orbiting habitat, and thence to another habitat orbiting Jupiter, is commonplace, at least if you have the money ... At the same time, he demonstrates Thad's rather interesting array of skills (fighting, obviously, but also infiltration and evasion), and gradually reveals what 'Europa' means to Thad and his friends.<br><br>I do agree that this could have been fleshed out more, particularly in terms of building up Masterson as a dangerous man in his own right rather than just a businessman with an ample supply of expendable goons. Some flashback scenes could have made the suicidal Europa incursion more meaningful; maybe scenes with Masterson practicing with weapons when he receives news of Thad's escape?<br><br>As with Swords in the Fire, the reader can fill in a lot of the blanks about this 'world' based on the scattered bits of information. It can be argued, however, that there is such a thing as leaving too much to the reader's imagination -- especially if the reader isn't well grounded in solar-system-colonization literature.<br><br>Robert M.<br><br>