Winter Song

By: Colin Harvey

Narrated by: Jon Caruth

The planet had fallen off the map. Lost on an unknown and forgotten planet, scientist Karl Allman discovers himself hunted by an ancient race. The descendants of earlier colonists have reverted to a savage tribal culture of sacrifice, pillage and violence. When Karl falls in love with an outcast girl, he has only one goal: Escape. But escape is a distant dream on this nightmare planet.

Colin’s first fiction was published in 2001, since when he has written novels, short stories and reviews, edited anthologies and judged the Speculative Literature Foundation’s annual Gulliver Travel Research Grant for five years. Colin’s reviews appeared regularly at Strange Horizons and he was the feature writer for speculative fiction at Suite101. Colin died unexpectedly of a stroke in August 2011.

©2010 Colin Harvey (P)2014 Audible Studios

Clumsy, slow and desperately needing an epilogue

First, a random question: Audible lists one of the genres as “solar system.” Which means …?

I loved the concept of a space exploring scientist getting marooned on a savage planet. The first ten minutes was exciting. Unfortunately, it’s then five hours of Viking living, with an annoying addition of second person narration for parts (you walk into the tent, you wonder if they’re brother and sister…).

Things pick up a little with the escape from the savages and the plot thickening as Karl seeks an escape from the planet. Unfortunately, the final two hours drifts back into tedium and then leaves us with a rather open ended finish.

Random thoughts: The science is of the interesting, but not very plausible, variety; AIs and nanobots facilitate things like healing and getting past language barriers. The story is told using a very small cast and women seem to only exist to be sexual or romantic interests. There’s limited profanity and one, on the tame end, sex scene. I predicted most of the story and the unexpected parts weren’t very engaging.

Bad

I’m beginning to pick up a pattern with a lot of free books like this one there no good. Suffered as long as I could.