Customer Reviews

A Rose From Old Terra: a novel of the Scattered Worlds

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The epic quality found in the future worlds of J.M. Straczynski's Babylon 5 and Frank Herbert's Dune is also apparent in the work of Don Sakers. In A Rose From Old Terra, instead of hostile aliens or experienced spaceship captains, the unlikely heroes are librarians who set out to prove that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. From the moment protagonist Jedrek nor Talin receives his summons, I was compelled to follow him on his journey for better or worse. Credible science and powerful character dynamics were nicely integrated into a narrative colored with ingeniously placed statistics and commercial advertisements. The unpredictable plot of this book was skillfully paced, though I would have liked more detailed descriptions of its unique settings and of the societies that inhabit them. (Sakers has managed to come up with some of the most distinctive alien cultures in SF literature that it's hard not to crave more.) At times reminiscent of Mary Doria Russell's themes in both The Sparrow and Children of God, some of this material questions alien ethics and, when it does, becomes strictly adult in nature but never gratuitous. When I finished this novel, it occurred to me that some of the best genre writers are also the least acknowledged. Hopefully, in Don Sakers' case, this will be remedied as more readers of science fiction catch on. Personally, I can't seem to get enough of the Scattered World series and it's with great anticipation that I wait for the author's next installment.