Customer Reviews

Seven Beyond

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

 

 

A lifespan stretching 800 years is nothing exceptional to the ancient Longists in Seven Beyond, a fantastic story of spiritual bonds between worlds and lifeforms. Combining the journey for a new place to call home with the emotion of true friendship, Seven Beyond is an involving, metaphysical, and emotional saga, and documents Stella Atrium as an original and talented writer of science fiction fantasy.

This story is told from the point-of-view of more than one narrator, but that works for me. A new trend in movies and even TV (with Boomtown), multiple narrators helped to deepen the future world of SEVEN BEYOND because it allows David Shanklen to relate what happened to the common people in the society. I like the members of the traveling group, and especially the mastiff called the biscuit-eater. I visited the suggested website Glass Bead Game and enjoyed the postings, but recommend you read the novel first.

Although the hero of this story is Dr. Meenins, two travel companions are great women characters. Lady Drasher is a rich Russian lady with her own life, and Linda Deemer is seven months pregnant. I enjoyed that they relied on their own solutions to problems and didn't play the victim or the simp. Multi-dimensional women are becoming the standard.

This story was great once you sorted out the character names. I especially liked the Clem stuff and his offworld adventures. The way the author tied together the story lines and kept coming back to Clem's story related while the group of friends traveled was cool. The vocabulary was kinda high-end, but I learned to like it. And Lady Drasher rocked!