I've always talked a lot about how much music inspires me, and in fact how I couldn't live without it. I miss a day with no music. In the past three years I've been privileged to go to several concerts featuring my two most favourite bands - The Rasmus, who inspired so much of the tone and feel in my Keir series and got me writing again, and Starset who have now become my favourite band to write to, and who I never expected to ever see in concert in the UK. I've now seen them FOUR times, twice as support and twice in their own right on tour. I saw them in February as headline, and each time I think I've already seen them at their best, they just set the bar higher again, with a super appropriate change of image and a set of songs that fit with our current pandemic.
While The Rasmus still take full credit for inspiring Keir, Starset have definitely taken the top spot as my SFR muse. Why? Not just because I love their music and lyrics, but because to me they encapsulate what SFR is, or at least the kind I like to write. Star-crossed lovers, separated by space and time, galaxies colliding, telepathy, enslavement, end of the world stuff. And it's not just music. No, these guys have a novel and a graphic novel out too. They are all about the science, and the fate of humanity, travel to other worlds, and messages from the future. It's not just what they do, it's what they are. Wrap all that up in a song and a video, and I'm a happy space bunny. Just as an example, the video below has always reminded me of The Martian (or rather The Martian reminds me of this, since I saw the music video first).
Or if that doesn't light your fire, you could try Breaking Benjamin's Ashes of Eden (undertones of Passengers), Linkin Park's In The End (for a touch of apocalyptic), or The Rasmus with Justify (a very Keir song, lol).
Writing Update
So, since editing and publishing my Christmas story last year, I've been working on Redemption 2.5, the story my editor felt was missing before book three of the series. I'd always had a vague idea for it in my head, but it wasn't until the release of Starset's Vessels album helped me fix some frankly terrible elements in book three and turn it into something that might actually work that I felt I could do something with it. Despite slowly recovering from burn out and wanting to write again, working full time didn't leave me much...well...time! However, by the start of this year I felt I might be approaching a point with it where I was thinking about booking actual edits for it. Well, more the point of 'omg, this story sucks!!' But as things happen, my beloved editor posted a discount for edits booked and I took it as a sign. Redemption 2.5 was booked for a slot in June. I've now completed the first round, and while I was waiting for those I've finally finished a solstice scifi novella, tidied up an angel short story, and re-opened book 3. Seems I'm an all or nothing kind of person...
In the past few years, I have really struggled to read. Up until my 30s, I was a voracious reader - as a kid, I would read pretty much anything and everything, even my mum's Mills and Boon or my dad's Ian Fleming and Alexander Kent books, when everything of my own had run out. It was in my teens that my preferences fell into the scifi and fantasy genres predominantly, and later a definite leaning to SFR (though at the time I didn't even know it was called that).
In my 30s parenthood made it difficult to find time to read. I'm not a person who likes to be pulled out of a book once I'm in - I'm more a 'devour in one sitting' than a 'chapter a day' kind of reader - so having children meant I'd rarely get through a story. I'm not sure if it was the constant disturbances that broke my ability to stick with a book, or just that real life was a lot more demanding. Whatever, as the years went by, even when I got time to devote to a book I found it increasingly hard to settle to one. Publishing didn't help because it meant I started to analyse even old favourites with a much more critical eye, unable to switch off editing mode even when not in the middle of edits of my own. I became increasingly picky, only liking a very specific area of SFR. Finding new ones became harder as authors either ignorantly or wilfully mis-classified their books' genre on Amazon, and Amazon's own insistence on stuffing sponsored posts into searches, making it too hard a slog. When I did have a hankering to read, I went back to old favourites rather than risk anything new despite the dozens of free reads sitting untouched on my Kindle.
So reading a brand new book is a rare occurrence. But this book I've chosen to review today is different. In the normal scheme of things, I probably wouldn't have picked it up myself. I'm not really into Earth setting conspiracy theories, and the cover wouldn't have caught my eye. It was bought for me as a Christmas present.
SETI radio astronomer Dr. Stephen Browning wakes disoriented and confused in a dingy gas station bathroom. He stumbles home trying to put the pieces of his night back together, only to learn that new tenants have been living in his apartment for over a month. They can offer no explanation, only a letter, written in his own handwriting with three simple words: Shave your head. Desperate to understand what is happening, Browning follows the instructions and is shocked to discover a string of numbers concealed beneath his hair--a series of coordinates tattooed upon the side of his head--coordinates which lead him to the Allen Telescope Array, where he becomes the unwitting recipient of a mysterious signal originating six light years away. His world slowly unraveling, Browning sets out on an epic journey to decipher the meaning of the cryptic transmission, quickly finding that he is merely a helpless pawn in a much bigger game. He soon learns that the secret transmission holds not only a message from the far reaches of the galaxy but a dire warning from the future. Little does Browning know that unless he can protect the transmission from falling into the wrong hands, not only will the warning come to pass but a far greater threat awaits mankind.
Review:
I'm going to straight up admit to some instant bias here, because this isn't just a book. This is the origin story for my favourite band, and as such that made it really difficult to review as a normal book. If I was reviewing it as an actual stand-alone story, I'd say this was in need of an edit to tighten it up, or at least a proof-reader to fix the most obvious errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting. The story can feel somewhat disjointed as it's presented as a collection of an individual's account mostly but interspersed with journals, security reports, observed data, and intelligence files. It also has a rather jarring switch of perspectives right at the end as it changes from the main character we've followed throughout to a secondary character. As conspiracy theory stories go, this still manages to spring a few surprises and twists, while running along believable lines of a huge cover-up. It follows the creation of the Starset Society (the 'authors' of the book), who have now turned to music to spread the message at the heart of the story - a transmission from the future warning of a disaster ahead for humanity. If you're familiar with the band's songs, it ties in quite seamlessly with their concerts, or demonstrations as they prefer to call them. Warning - if you're off to a demonstration and haven't read the book, please be aware there are spoilers during their performances, something I sadly wasn't expecting before seeing them live in February. That's what I get for not reading it when I got it, lol. It's another nice touch though, which adds to the book and the music.
Although the style of writing is a little dry and a touch emotionless (one reason I switched from straight SF to SFR which tends to have more emotional impact for me), there's a lyrical edge to it. One minute the author has written a somewhat sexist description of the female lead, the next he's describing a kiss like he's writing the lyrics to one of their songs. And despite this not being my typical type of book. I got really attached to the main character and his computer hacker female partner. The twist at the end was shocker and I think was a bit like getting to the end of a book and being told it was all a dream (but not exactly that because I'm trying to keep this spoiler free).
In conclusions:
Normally I wouldn't have even picked this type of book up, but despite the need for at least proof-reading and not being my typical thing, it definitely had something because I'm still thinking about this book and the characters weeks after finishing it. I'd love a sequel but I guess really that's their music. Overall, I enjoyed this book and happy I stuck with it because really I needed something different and this was certainly that. Would I recommend it? Yes, I think I would, but if you aren't a fan of their music it may lose some of its meaning taken just as a book alone. And that at least gives it a unique feature.
These trials make us who we are, who we are, we are We're motivated by the scars that we're made of These trials make us who we are, who we are, we are We take our places in the dark And turn our hearts to the stars...
Book Update
I am currently procrastinating over the first round of edits returned to me but will have them sent back soon. *looks shifty* Meanwhile I'm debating if I want to spend money on editing for two further stand-alone pieces, a scifi novella and an angel themed short. Do or do not...
