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brennanlafaro 's review for:
Mind's Horizon
by Eric Malikyte
3.5 stars rounded.
Mind’s Horizon, by Eric Malikyte, starts off with a prologue that reaches out and grabs the reader, giving them a taste of the cosmic, other-worldly content that the author intends to address throughout the rest of the story. I read it right before leaving for work, and found myself weighing whether or not I could afford to be late. Rather than an introduction to what we will spend the next 350 or so pages doing, it actually serves as more of a bookend. The bulk of the book spends more time dealing with human relationships than with cosmic monsters. That doesn’t mean we don’t get a lot of the latter, but Mind’s Horizon makes a full-fledged effort to distance itself from its’ Lovecraftian ancestors where the characters are second-rate in service to gods and monsters.
Malikyte lets the novel take it’s time getting to the locale where most of the story will take place. We get to live in the world he built, we meet all the characters. Through mostly dialogue and limited flashback, we examine their complex relationships, ranging from familial to having fought on different sides of a civil war. The world our story takes place in is in a second ice age, and survivors are still reeling from a war between federalists and revolutionists. Malikyte gives a clear glimpse of what has lead to this moment without beating us over the head with it. We get enough information to set the stage, but it never becomes a distraction.
The cosmic elements never disappear throughout. There are always looks back at the events from the prologue and the novel’s primary antagonist attempting to balance the line between summoning and serving the alternate dimensional beings. At the forefront is the way the characters deal with isolation, the surroundings in their new home, and each other. In many ways, Malikyte uses the isolation that stems from the ice age to replicate the atmosphere created in movies like Alien or Event Horizon, without venturing into the farthest reaches of space.
Pacing was occasionally an issue throughout. I found myself either plowing through chapter by chapter, anxiously anticipating what was coming next at some points, and dragging through other parts to get to next event of plot during other parts of the book. The story as a whole works on the basis of character relationships and tense atmosphere, just not in a strictly linear fashion. If you’re okay with that, and you like a cosmic horror story that doesn’t (metaphorically) sacrifice humanity for tentacles, this might be the one for you. I was given an e-book by the author for review consideration.
Mind’s Horizon, by Eric Malikyte, starts off with a prologue that reaches out and grabs the reader, giving them a taste of the cosmic, other-worldly content that the author intends to address throughout the rest of the story. I read it right before leaving for work, and found myself weighing whether or not I could afford to be late. Rather than an introduction to what we will spend the next 350 or so pages doing, it actually serves as more of a bookend. The bulk of the book spends more time dealing with human relationships than with cosmic monsters. That doesn’t mean we don’t get a lot of the latter, but Mind’s Horizon makes a full-fledged effort to distance itself from its’ Lovecraftian ancestors where the characters are second-rate in service to gods and monsters.
Malikyte lets the novel take it’s time getting to the locale where most of the story will take place. We get to live in the world he built, we meet all the characters. Through mostly dialogue and limited flashback, we examine their complex relationships, ranging from familial to having fought on different sides of a civil war. The world our story takes place in is in a second ice age, and survivors are still reeling from a war between federalists and revolutionists. Malikyte gives a clear glimpse of what has lead to this moment without beating us over the head with it. We get enough information to set the stage, but it never becomes a distraction.
The cosmic elements never disappear throughout. There are always looks back at the events from the prologue and the novel’s primary antagonist attempting to balance the line between summoning and serving the alternate dimensional beings. At the forefront is the way the characters deal with isolation, the surroundings in their new home, and each other. In many ways, Malikyte uses the isolation that stems from the ice age to replicate the atmosphere created in movies like Alien or Event Horizon, without venturing into the farthest reaches of space.
Pacing was occasionally an issue throughout. I found myself either plowing through chapter by chapter, anxiously anticipating what was coming next at some points, and dragging through other parts to get to next event of plot during other parts of the book. The story as a whole works on the basis of character relationships and tense atmosphere, just not in a strictly linear fashion. If you’re okay with that, and you like a cosmic horror story that doesn’t (metaphorically) sacrifice humanity for tentacles, this might be the one for you. I was given an e-book by the author for review consideration.