Title: Lex Talionis
Author: R. S. A. Garcia
Genre: science fiction / space opera
Price: $6.95 (ebook) / $14.35
(paperback)
Publisher: Dragonwell Publications
ISBN: 978-1940076126
Point of Sale: Amazon publisherswebsite
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib
One of the authors I follow, Tobias Buckell,
recommended Lex Talionis on his
blog. The author, R. S. A. Garcia, is,
like Buckell, from the Caribbean. In her
case, she still lives in the region on the island of Trinidad. I decided to take Toby’s recommendation, and
I’m glad I did. The book opens on a
spaceship where a badly wounded man is desperately trying to get to the bridge,
and has to avoid the thing that’s killed all of his fellow crewmembers. We then cut to an alien city where a human
merchant discovers another human in the gutter being attacked by a local alien.
The story then races off from there, and
becomes a mystery. The human in the
gutter is a woman, a soldier, genetically engineered and suffering from
amnesia. The man on the spaceship
reveals his secrets more slowly, but he proves to be less than sympathetic. The world created by Garcia is less than
friendly, and has many problems. It’s
also a place where humans are by no means the top species in the universe.
I have to say I found Lex Talionis an engrossing read.
Figuring out who did what and why was interesting. I found the characters well-developed and
believable. I did have a bit of a
problem with the structure of the novel, in that there were multiple flashbacks
and other jumps in time, but I was able to sort out where and when with no real
problem. Highly recommended.
9/10