Book Reviews by Ehlen Administration

Solaris Seethes by Janet McNulty My rating: 3 of 5 stars Rynah has barely escaped with her life, as her planet’s magnetic force spins out of alignment. Her estranged grandfather’s ship, Solaris, is her only chance to escape. As it turns out her crazy grandfather was right about the prophecies and those old stones, and she must decipher the cryptic legends about them to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Fortunately, Solaris is far more helpful there than she ever imagined. Solaris Seethes is the first book in a series that follows Rynah and her band of misfits across the galaxy in a ship with a personality all her own as she seeks to right wrongs and avenge her people. Not the most original sci-fi storyline, but still a good one. The plot and the characters are interesting, and the depth of the characters is well thought out, but the writing/editing really needs some work. There are really random parenthetical phrases throughout where it should be just basic descrip...

Phantom by Mary B. Sinclair My rating: 1 of 5 stars Phantom follows the musings of Jill, as she reflects on some terrible counseling sessions she had with a social worker after the death of her mother. Clearly the social worker didn’t do her job, because Jill was all over the place, spiraling downward into madness as she tried to reconcile Occupy movements with the tyranny of the gay agenda using the imagery in the Phantom of the Opera. Seriously. This is a relatively short story, particularly since the last third of the book was a pretentious “Q&A” or study where the author, Mary Sinclair, goes point by point to explain every single reference Jill made in the internal monologue. While I disagree with a lot of the explanations and the fatuous comparisons between Jill’s journey and other famous literary characters, the explanation actually made sense as an argument from the author’s POV, unlike the weird text and ramblings of the actual story, which was filled with grammati...