Review::Emergence by Nick M. Lloyd

Emergence by Nick M. Lloyd

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Every once in a while there is a book that just grabs my attention and keeps it. I hadn't quite expected that from Nick Lloyd's Emergence. It seems to be written in the style of a procedural suspense thriller. This tends to create the air of Hard Science Fiction and thankfully not the difficult kind of hard. Well, maybe some difficult if you try to include the many worlds interpretation. I almost thought it would slip away from me when I was forced to focus heavily on the alien race. The world of Jack and Louise was becoming so entertaining that I didn't really want to take a break to examine the Gadium in the ship above Earth and certainly not the ones far off in space at other worlds.

There are a number of ways to handle alien races in a Science Fiction novel. One of those ways is to try to make everyday life and dialogue sound like us. Sometimes that choice can make the story a bit less than palatable. In Emergence it helped a lot, because there's a lot to get to know about these aliens before the climax of the story. What brings them here; and why they have come all this way only to watch. Much of this gets answered and even more questions the reader hasn't thought to ask. The procedural nature of the story is not limited to the Earth half of the story and the reader should be ready to learn a lot about the procedural nature of the aliens who watch.

But, to be honest, what I liked about Emergence is the characters. I had resolved that I was going to be concentrating on the colorful characters of all the Earth Humans. The animosity between Jack and Louise drive the story. Louise might not have begun her investigation, but for the conflict she'd been having with Jack. The dynamic duo of Jeff and Mike as college professors and the main researchers within the story are a good foil for Louise's hard nosed investigative reporting. But that was quickly derailed by the scenes depicting the initial discomfort between the aliens Aytch and Justio, which expands as the reader finds there are dissenters in the most perfect ranks of the great race.

At one point I was almost ready to let the story guide me into the look and feel of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But this never got to the level of silliness of Douglas Adam's work. This seems to stay in the more serious vein perhaps like X-files. One would think that since the aliens are mostly there to watch that it would be pretty boring. For the most part the reader is initially led to believe it is pretty sedate; but soon, with the potential for internal strife, things begin to get interesting.

It takes a while for the reader to come to grips with the rules that the Gadium must abide by while observing the Emergence. It's those rules that set the stage for most of the story's conflicts. It's those rules and the Gadium belief that they are doing the right thing that lead to some pretty strange occurrences. Eventually everyone will be in a race against time to complete missions that all seem to be at odds with each other.

It's easy to start picking sides but it becomes confusing when the reader has to take into consideration that one or the other of the Gadium factions has to dominate and when that happens then the conflict becomes between them and the humans and neither of the former two are a good choice for that ultimate conflict and the humans are being set up to mostly lose in any situation.

When it gets to the final solutions the readers is left satisfied; but the final judgment will be that there will likely be more to this story.

This is well written well paced Procedural Science Fiction that waxes Hard most of the time though the seeming theoretical nature of Many Worlds Interpretation will stretch some readers suspension of disbelief.

You need to read this to see what I mean and you shouldn't be disappointed.

J.L. Dobias



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