The Immortality Thief

What did I like about this?

The main thing that really helped was a couple of the characters felt interesting and distinct if not necessarily super deep. I enjoyed getting to experience the lieutenant whose uniform is in rags and has over the last two years of living alone descended into various neuroticisms. I enjoyed getting to know two characters who are Ministers. The rest of the cast is forgettable. The MC is distinct and decent enough. Cheeky but not really funny.

There are many aspects of the work building that are really interesting and well thought out. The Ministers have different bodies that have adapted to space living and subsequent differences in their culture and mannerisms. They have a unique language type that uses a system of shining light with different patterns and colors.

I love all the weird mutated species in this book and how horrifying some of them are.

And yet despite those cool things, this was not a fun read. I finished it because I wanted to see the author expound on the different world building ideas but actually reading this was unfortunately painful. And the sad thing is, I feel 90% of the problems were totally preventable. I don’t lay the blame at the author’s feet, I lay it at the publisher’s. This is the authors debut novel and I know how hard it is to produce something like this. First drafts are always rough. This just didn’t get any beta readers or editing!

Before I rant, here is the premise. The main character is a linguist nerd (which is a field I’ve taken several classes in) and ostensibly the book is going to explore the theme and implications of immortality. The premise is that a group of criminals are given a job to extract the data with the secret of immortality from a spaceship that’s been abandoned for thousands of years and is next to a dying star about to go supernova.

This data is called the Philosopher’s Stone (the key to immortality) and it’s a big deal to find it, imagine what this discovery could mean for humanity…but from early on there are these people called Ministers who are stated to be immortal. So that begs the question, who are these Ministers? Are they not human? Are they aliens or robots? It’s not explained what they are but they are certainly quite humanoid. The story progresses along with several of the main characters being Ministers and playing large in the plot, but the narrator refuses to explain what they are to us. And that’s a big problem because their existence undermines the whole premise. Apparently these ministers already have the key to immortality so then why is it a big deal for humanity to find the philosophers stone? Why would the ministers have that secret but the humans who are very similar don’t? Then, a third of the way through the book we have a “big revelation” that it turns out that the Philosopher’s Stone project on this ship was what birthed the ministers…you can tell that this is supposed to be a “big reveal” but it just doesn’t work.

Another big thing sloppily done is that the style seems like it’s supposed to be scary but never is. The horror isn’t horrifying even though there are pretty gnarly creatures revealed. I never once got a rising sense of dread even though bad things were coming in the dark. I don’t think the author has figured out yet how to write horror, how to build tension.

And then there are all sorts of other things done sloppily. The bad guys are pushovers, the setup is too tropey, obvious questions aren’t answered, there are flashbacks that feel completely random and unnecessary, not at all connected to the plot…when you’re in an active combat scene, the good guys have way too much time to talk and do all kinds of complicated things.

I didn’t buy two of the twists and there were two big coincidences late in the book. Spoilers ahead but, one of the main characters reveals once we are most of the way through the book that he just so happened to be the general in charge of assaulting the MC’s home planet. Really, the one person in the whole universe just happened to end up here?

There’s a scene where someone shoots a hole in the hull of the spaceship and a character is “sucked out to space” and half of their body burned by a star’s radiation…but then suddenly they are back in the spaceship and it’s said that there was only ever a small hole shot in the hull that a different character patched quickly. So what gives? Half of your body was fried by radiation from a tiny hole? Also the other character was unscathed?

Also a big part of the premise is that a star is about to go nova so they are racing against the clock to get the data out in time. So many books get really unscientific with this topic. Stars going nova is a process that takes millions of years to lead up to. You’re not going to be able to time when it happens down to the year let alone the minute and second like they do in this book! And then the idea that you can see it go nova but then you have time to outrun the shockwave…I highly doubt that that’s at all accurate.

Ok. I could go on and on about the problems. I actually originally compiled a huge list. But I don’t want to beat a horse to death. Here’s the thing. I’m a writer, and I’ve hosted a writers group and worked with many writers for 6-7 years now. This book would have been an amazing first draft. Or even third draft especially considering this is a debut novel! And writing a book like this is like really really complicated. There are a lot of things the author is doing well! It’s just that you have to put your book through the rounds of beta readers and multiple layers of editing starting with developmental edits and going from there. And it appears that this book just skipped all that. I think the author didn’t get the support they needed. Anyways. I don’t post reviews to revel in bashing things. I really don’t. I don’t think there’s anything funny about mocking or taking a book down to size the way many reviews do. It’s not been my intention to be mean in any way with this review and I hope that my intent shows. I think the author has a lot of great ideas and I would be open to reading the next book of theirs—provided it’s been edited, which is usually pretty apparent in the first thirty minutes—because I would enjoy getting to know their universe more. That’s all for now.