Monday, October 15, 2012

Santuario by G. B. Gordon

3.5 STARS

Santuario - Book 1

3.5 Stars!! Well, I want another half star so I can give this 3.5 stars. 

Santuario was a good read. I enjoyed it. Well-written with clearly defined and different characters, a juicy mystery, some interesting world-building and a plot that kept me wondering all through the book. 

The relationship between the two main characters, Alex and Bengt unfolds very slowly until a ramp-up into intimacy near the end of the book. It was working for me and even the rush was okay, given the plot line that I don't want to give away. But for me, there was a problem with the cliff-hanger ending. I think maybe I didn't need the epilogue dangled in my face to make me go for Santuario #2. 

I think I would have liked a little more insight into the differences between the two cultures of this world because I'm still not sure about some of the more important differences and how they'll affect our heroes. There are also a few spots in the book where the author uses clippings from a newspaper to explain things/further the plot and on my ereader, I could not get the darned things big enough to read the printing of them. The font of the paragraph before and the paragraph following could be HUGE, but the clipping stayed really, really small. That was unfortunate. 

All in all, I would definitely recommend this book to those that enjoy mysteries and alternate universe type science fiction. Maybe there'll be more heat in the following volumes, but you know what? I didn't really miss the heat in this one - I suspect it's coming. :)

EDT: I contacted Riptide Publishing and they've informed me that the problem with the 'clippings' has been resolved and updated versions have been uploaded to the site so I can download and replace the one on my Kobo. Have I mentioned that I love Riptide Publishing? They rock!