84 pages
Published 2021
Read September 3
Rating: 2ish out of 5
I’m not in the business of ripping down self-published books. If I don’t like one, I’ll opt to DNF it rather than post a review (since the whole point of this blog, from its inception, is to record every book I read).
That’s exactly what I did with this little book (really more of a novelette than a novella) a few years back. But its plot of corporate time travel in the near future is just close enough to one of my own long-simmering WIPs that I decided I had to give it an official go, just to make sure I don’t unconsciously crib anything from it.
Dr. Yvette Coradi is a fastidious young paleobotanist in a future where that means experimenting with paleoflora brought back by Quantum Travel expeditions for new pharmaceutical compounds. She gets recruited for one such expedition to the early Pliocene of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, a corporate stooge from Bionext comes along with a pharmaceutical team of his own, and gets up to secretive things in the prehistoric woods.
Many of the issues with self-publication are present here. But honestly, just a tiny bit of polish would bridge the gap between this and the airport technothriller bestsellers that it emulates. I think a big part of my initial frustration with this story was that I wanted something more from this premise, instead of a somewhat bland confetti of Timeline, Congo, and Almost Adam.
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