Review: Gods of Kiranis (Kiranis Book 1)

Title: Gods of Kiranis (Kiranis Book 1)

Author: Ronald A. Geobey

Genre: science fiction

Price: $2.99

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services

ASIN: B0087OUE7K

Point of Sale: Amazon
Free on Smashwords!

Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Ronald Geobey emailed me to request a review of his book, and mentioned that he read and enjoyed my book The Mars Run.  I replied back that “flattery may not get you everywhere, but apparently it will get you somewhere” and I agreed to review his book.  This review may plumb the limits of where flattery will get you.

Gods of Kiranis, Geobey’s first novel, is a genuine space opera.  The opening chapter involves Earth being encased in some kind of space-based cage, which greatly disrupts life in the myriad orbiting space stations.  Things get worse from there.

Now, you would think, correctly, that this is right up my alley.  Yet I found myself completely unable to get into the story.  Geobey writes well enough, so it’s not an issue of mechanics, and there is a solid story there, but I didn’t like it. 

I think I had a couple of problems.  The first is that I had no sense of place or time.  Yes, it was Earth, and since people were living on space stations it was the future, but the stations weren’t described, nor was the level of spaceflight defined.  I mean, first the cage showed up, then on page 30 or so alien warships show up.  The arrival of (apparently hostile) aliens is the first mention of their existence, and we the reader learn nothing about them.  When clearly hostile events happen (like, for example, 9/11) people immediately speculate, and that’s an excellent way for us the reader to get filled in on all the bad guys in the universe.

My second problem was that the tech in the book looked shockingly like used furniture rented from the back of a Star Trek the Next Generation (ST:TNG) set.  In Kiranis, we have warships big enough that people have private cabins with their own bathrooms, the Captain of one such warship has his girlfriend living onboard, and his interior security is bad enough that she can be kidnapped and hidden on his ship with (apparently) nobody seeing this.  Oh, and all of this is happening while they are desperately investigating the alien cage that appeared above Earth.

So, I guess you could say I didn’t like Gods of Kiranis.  Having said that, I suspect that much of what I didn’t like is personal to me, not a sign that the book is bad.  So, if your problem with the later editions of ST:TNG is that the plots weren’t dark enough, you may like Gods of Kiranis.

Update - Gods of Kiranis is free on Smashwords!

6/10