Thursday, May 19, 2022

Will Humankind Survive?

When Earth Shall Be No More by Paul Awad and Kathryn O'Sullivan


(from the back of the book) 
Environmental scientist Constance Roy is one of forty-nine refugees rescued from Earth's destruction and transported to the ark spaceship Orb by an automaton race called the Curators.  Twelve months have passed since their rescue.  But now, with the ship's orbit decaying, the refugees seem doomed to crash into Jupiter's fiery belly.

In a parallel universe on present-day Earth. another version of Constance seeks answers to the questions that have haunted her since childhood: How and why did her mother die?  The head of a mysterious corporation housed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility can give her the answers, but not without a price.

Two timestreams collide when the Constance on Earth discovers that Nicolas, her son, has the ability to save the Orb and its inhabitants.  Now she must battle treacherous Curators wishing to destroy Nicolas, while on the Orb, another Constance must fight to save the ship from Jupiter's fatal pull.

Only together can they save their son - and the future generations of humankind.



I think duel universes is always a solid starting point for a sci-fi story.   And I like the way you are given both stories simultaneously without ever losing track of which universe you are in at any given moment.  But some things in this story just didn't come together for me.  Especially with Nicolas saving all of humankind.  I was never really sure how what he did proved what it was supposed to prove.  And at the end there were a couple of things that were kind of resolved but still left me with questions. And there were times when situations were presented with more gravitas then they actually ended up having.  Probably to build tension and suspense, but what it led to was me being a little disappointed with the solution.  You have a spaceship and all souls on board about to be destroyed by Jupiter's gravity, creepy Curators running around and you don't know if they are friend or foe, experiments into traveling between universes, and a young boy who has to make some life and death decisions.  There should be tension and suspense enough without forcing it.  I did like the concept of the Curators, what they were and where they came from.  And they were suitably creepy.  I liked Nicolas and you did care what happened to him.  And towards the end there was a good amount of tension and suspense that kept you reading.  For me the good and not so good balanced out into an okay story.  It is neither great nor bad.

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