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The Trilisk Ruins (2014)

by Michael McCloskey(Favorite Author)

3.4 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Squidlord LLC

series

Parker Interstellar Travels

review 1: So... the writing in this book was bad. Really, noticeably bad. This was very noticeable from early in the book as the narrative lacked much in the way of description and the dialogue was stale; barely readable. Had this been intended as Young Adult fiction, the limited description, word choice, and dialogue might have been acceptable, but the sexual implications suggest that wasn't the intention. You might be wondering, then, why I gave it 4 stars. The answer is simple; I stopped noticing. From around the 3rd chapter or 4th chapter, the story really started moving. I found by myself impressed by the consideration the author gave to the concept of first encounters with an alien species and the potential not only for alien modes of communication but also to alien sensory in... moreput and even thought patterns. There is no universal benevolent intelligence guiding space development, all of the species referenced are apparently just as flawed and resource driven (for their own resources) as humanity.As far as the Science Fiction genre goes, I would not call this "hard" Sci-Fi but the core conceit of the series is made clear in the first couple chapters. "What could be more fascinating than the devices left behind by dead races, beings that didn't share anything with humans except intellect and the ability to create tools?"
review 2: I thing Michael McCloskey gets the balance right in "The Trilisk Ruins" (5 stars). The gubmint is the antagonist and it doesn't matter whether the administration is Republican or Democrat. (Both parties signed onto the USA PATRIOT Act after all.) The heroes are "criminals" who aim to misbehave. They spend a fair amount of time when they're in civilization scrubbing logs of incriminating evidence and bribing bureaucrats to overlook minor infractions. And they find the Feds like to infect everyone's computer with dormant spyware.None of this gets in the way of a ripping good yarn. The hero and her handsome male companions go rocketing off into space in search of treasure with the gubmint a few steps behind trying to stop them and/or steal the treasure for themselves. I figured the axe-grinding to story-telling ratio was fairly light-handed, but I should get a 2nd opinion from a statist.Many times you'll read an SF story wherein the aliens are just like us, but with some prosthetic makeup on their nose and funky jewelry (Bajoran), or pointy ears and eyebrows (Vulcan), or spots on their skin (Trill). Why, you might ask Gene Roddenberry? Because more elaborate makeup and alien get-ups cost too much, he'd say.McCloskey has no such constraints. He devises aliens with tri-lobed brains, or 20-lobed brains, and he gives them really alien forms. Like 40 limbs, no sense of smell or hearing, but a sense of mass. And he gives this a plausible explanation without getting bogged down in technobabble. High marks for making his aliens alien.Often you'll read Science Fiction with artificial intelligences and lots of networked computers and there's a sense that technology is just magic with wires. Not so in "The Trilisk Ruins." Communications protocols, encryption, and other terms of the geek's art are handled intelligently without any hand-wavy bull."The Trilisk Ruins" is the first novel in a series. If you buy this and like it, be prepared to buy a few more follow-up novels. I just did. less

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