Took me a little while to get into it but I'm glad I persisted as it did pick up and suck me in eventually (a few chapters in). I had some trouble with the names and remembering who everyone was, then discovered on finishing that there's a guide at the end of the book. Derp. Besides that, it was enjoyable, and an interesting setting.
32-year old Tar feels like a Non-Player Character in their own life. They’ve been utterly …
Amazing Fantasy Wholesomeness
5 stars
SO great I can't even. A hugely diverse cast of characters - more of this in fantasy books please! - all treated with dignity and inclusivity and respect. The relationships, both friendships and otherwise, dealt with in NPC are utterly wholesome, healthy, and heartwarming. The tale itself is a grand 'people from Earth find themselves stranded in a fantasy land', but executed in a far more entertaining and endearing fashion than other attempts I've read at this kind of story.
NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960s. They kept …
Mostly Good
3 stars
Pros: Easy to get through. The more detailed descriptions of alien technology and advanced science were easy to digest. The story on the whole was entertaining.
Cons: The characters and sub-plots occasionally felt trite. The main relationship developing between the MC and the secondary character felt unnecessarily lascivious ( I'm a published erotica author, I'm not prudish); out of place in book that was otherwise solely about first contact in an alien environment, and contained one of those 'weirdly written sex descriptions' that are frequently seen pulled from badly written sex scenes.
I don't feel I ever really got to know any of the side-characters much; they felt like they'd been added in only because the mission would have required that amount of people and so they had to be included and occasionally mentioned.
I'll be reading the second book in the series, only because I feel that the change …
Pros: Easy to get through. The more detailed descriptions of alien technology and advanced science were easy to digest. The story on the whole was entertaining.
Cons: The characters and sub-plots occasionally felt trite. The main relationship developing between the MC and the secondary character felt unnecessarily lascivious ( I'm a published erotica author, I'm not prudish); out of place in book that was otherwise solely about first contact in an alien environment, and contained one of those 'weirdly written sex descriptions' that are frequently seen pulled from badly written sex scenes.
I don't feel I ever really got to know any of the side-characters much; they felt like they'd been added in only because the mission would have required that amount of people and so they had to be included and occasionally mentioned.
I'll be reading the second book in the series, only because I feel that the change in circumstances hinted at at the end of Book 1 will provide a better environment for the story to take place, so it might be an improvement over this one. :)
Contains violence: yes (some brief human-on-human violence, other violence moreso)
Contains sexual scenes: yes (graphic descriptions of the act of sex, and a lot of 'horny on main' kind of rambling thoughts of the two chars who were falling for each other)
Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed …
Yep!
5 stars
It was lovely; the main character is asexual, there's a trans character, these things are handled with care and wholesomeness, and the story and writing were poignant.
Violence: Yes (described after-the fact)
Sexual Scenes: No