Survival Book 1, by author Chris Wright
Thank you to author Chris Wright for providing me with a copy of Survival in exchange for this honest review.
Survival is a science fiction horror novel that taps into a lot of fears people may have surrounding advancing technology and humanity in the future. It begins with the fear of worrying that you can no longer determine what is real anymore.
Danny and Olivia have been close friends for years. Danny is certain of this. At least until one day when she seems to have completely disappeared from existence. Danny cannot find her, cannot contact her, and even her home doesn’t seem to have ever been occupied by her.
He begins to ask his friend circle and nobody else remembers ever knowing an Olivia. He begins to worry that he’s going insane until he starts to experience other reality fluxuations as well. And then more people start disappearing, or are taken, away from reality.
The beginning of the novel is mostly introductions to the very large and very diverse cast of characters. We are given a run down of what feels like dozens of characters to keep track of. This strategy becomes impersonal and I found myself not caring about a single one of these characters.
It seems like many of these characters are just cannon fodder for a higher body count. The next part of the book describes disappearance after disappearance of characters I never got to know well enough for it to matter. It gets repetitive quickly.
About 100 or so pages in we get a big reveal that suddenly makes Survival more interesting. Unfortunately, it comes far too late in the novel.
Toward the end of the novel there is another reaveal that answers many of the questions I had along the way and I found it quite satisfying. However, it was around this time that I also realized that this would be a book 1 in a series and that I would not get a full conclusion during this issue.
I am honestly completely fed up with this. Every goddamned book and movie is a part 1 anymore. I’m over it. I want conclusions. I want things finished. I don’t want to commit to an endless number of sequels. And above all else I want to consent to a series before I start one. Nowhere in the book description does it say “part 1.” I was duped.
This vital piece of information was left out off the back cover. The author also left out the part where he hires an editor. This book is completely riddled with grammatical errors, typos, tense errors, and ultimately reads like a first draft. Self publishing is not an excuse for skipping this step.
This makes it all the more frustrating that I absolutely loved the ending of this book.
When Survival finally gets down to the characters that matter and starts building their relationship it finally gets really good. Suddenly, I started to care about what author Wright had to say and what he has to say is really interesting and heavy. It’s thought provoking and hits an emotional center that balances real world concerns with both worry and hope.
I would love to see a second edition of Survival. A lot of it needs to be trimmed, changed, rearranged, rewritten, and corrected but it has the potential to be great. I think Wright jumped the gun on publishing. Given some patience and a lot more work it could be a masterful piece of modern science fiction. But as it stands right now it’s just a good idea.
2/5 technologies 📱🖥
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Buy it here: Survival: A Sci-Fi/Horror, where reality begins to bite.
For and indie sci fi that doesn’t land just the ending check out Off World Hotel & Resort
