Jupiter: Illusions of Faith by Kynan Waterford

First off, let me say this off my chest: Supanova is awesome.

I went last weekend not really expecting it to be very good (the last few years were pretty dull) and ended up doing half my Christmas shopping and picking up a tonne of indie books from local authors. I don't know whether my tastes have changed or there was a different crew this time, but this year Supanova got fun again.

Therefore it looks like I'm going to be reviewing a bunch of indie books over the next few weeks. I'll get started right now with Jupiter:Illusions of Faith by Kynan Waterford.

This is the first book of the System series, which apparently will have nine books, each one based around a different planet in our solar system. Each book will work as a stand-alone, so you won't need to read the whole series to understand what's going on.

On Jupiter, energy is harvested using a process that is claimed to be deadly to the world's native inhabitants. The problem is that no one can agree if the inhabitants are real or a hallucination. The main character, Garen, has dedicated his life to the fervent belief that they are real. During an escape from custody, a fleeting encounter with a third-class woman Leisa will change both their lives - and his mission - forever.

This is hard-core science fiction, which I don't usually get into, but I actually quite enjoyed this book. It was fast-paced, the tech talk was just enough to get across the information I needed without bogging down the text, and the characters faced genuinely difficult decisions and conflicts. One of the big questions posed is whether Garen is a freedom-fighter or a terrorist. You could argue both ways, and the answer for me probably lies somewhere in the middle. It makes him a compelling character to read because you're never quite sure about him.

Leisa, the other main point-of-view character, holds up her end of the narration extremely well. I think I connected better with her because she wasn't obsessed with the cause like Garen. She was just an ordinary person trying to survive the crap getting thrown her way. Her storyline also centered around all these ideas of agency and identity, which came with a good strong dose of body horror. Be warned; this book borders on gruesome at times, and other times waltzes across said border into outright nightmare fuel. (That's not a criticism, btw).

I did have an issue with Garen and Leisa's relationship, which was a shame because the plot hinges on it. The way I understood it, Garen's difficulty connecting with people is a physical problem due to... spoilery stuff. It's not that he won't, or isn't used to it, or is suppressing something; he physically cannot make that chemical leap in his neurons that makes love happen. And yet half an hour with Leisa is enough to overcome it. Don't get me wrong, I liked both characters. They were smart and decisive, and did what they had to in order to survive. I just needed a bit more explanation as to why she could have this effect on him and no one else.

Other than that, this was a good read; an exciting action-adventure story with romance, imaginative futuristic technology and some challenging questions at the core. Definitely a good choice for the first indie book from the pile on my floor.

It can be found at Amazon.com in electronic form, or hard copies ordered from the author's website.