Customer Reviews

Open Your Eyes

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Cosmic" and "intense" are just two of the words that come to mind after reading Paul Jessup's Open Your Eyes. Wasting absolutely no time, the story opens with a woman named Ekhi and her lover, a star about to go supernova in the last gasp of their last union, and it goes at warp speed from there. Jessup immediately sets the scene for a story that you will not want to put down.


The style is prose that, unlike much of contemporary science fiction, is intelligent and visually dynamic. I could see the bones of the space ship, see the butterflies in the cage that made up half of Mari's face, and feel the crackling skin of the centuries old captain Itsasu. Each character has his or her own motivations for being on the scavenger ship. If Ekhi's case, she was rescued after her lover went super nova, but there was one thing none of them suspected, that the Heart of the ship had its own plans. Beware a space ship that has a mind of its own.

Darkly imaginative, this space opera grabs your attention from the sensual opening scene to the last pages where all hope seems lost. From a beating heart to the love child of a cosmic coupling, the novella is a compelling read. Reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, the idea of language as a virus is more compelling and without the complicated ins and outs of Stephenson's work. It really seems more poignant that the characters don't know how or why it worked, and neither does the reader. The dread builds up as the inevitablity of infection looms over the scavenger ship's crew.

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This is the first work I've read by Jessup; he's obviously a capable wordsmith. The novella has some striking written visualizations, and though the prose occasionally stumbles, overall it's an effective stylistic approach.

The main story, though odd, was compelling. This is what soft space opera should be: supernovas and alien invasions without any pseudo-scientific explication. The characters--some sympathetic, some repulsive--are mostly well-drawn. However, as with many junior (and quite a few senior) authors, the ending lacked closure. The character of Ekhi opens and closes the story, but does absolutely nothing between. It felt to me like the author had written an interesting core story, then either he or an editor had forced Ekhi around the edges in an attempt to create a motif of circularity.

4 stars. Would have been 3 1/2 were it any longer, and 4 1/2 with a more cohesive ending.

Fantastic novella. I was overtaken with the fleshy-industrial imagery and somewhere along the way I became really invested in the characters which is rare for me, especially in such a limited amount of pages.

The only mark against it is the illustrations. There are four of them, all in the begining and all pretty poorly done. It's distracting. The cover is beautiful, though.