Book Review: Ephemeris

The expansive second book in J Dianne Dotson’s Questrison Saga.

Very unusually for me, I went straight into Ephemeris immediately after finishing Heliopause. I have so many books on my TBR that I tend to like jumping around, like sampling everything at a buffet. But this time, I went straight from book one to book two in the same series!

Ephemeris has an odd description: it’s a prequel, sequel and concurrent companion piece to Heliopause all at the same time. This kind of out of the box thinking is one of the many reasons I have come to love indie publishing. It’s a lot of weight to put on a single book. And I tell you, it accomplishes all of those things with aplomb. It thoroughly expands on what was introduced in the first book with epic scale and places it in its proper context. Imagine being in the TARDIS; the Doctor flips the switch with a wink and a grin, then tells you to open the door. And when you do, you’re in the middle of space surrounded by stars and nebulae, and looking down upon a huge galaxy, where moments before you were just in your living room at home. That’s the leap in scale Ephemeris achieves here.

Blurb

Visions of doom. A growing evil. A new hero emerges as old alliances unravel.

Plucked from space and raised in a star-city of androids, impetuous Galla-Deia looks human but is not. Chosen to stop the dual threats of a galactic natural disaster and a malevolent alien entity, she must grow as a commander and gain the trust of both humans and non-humans alike. Unknown to her, the entity draws zealots to its cause, destabilizing interstellar order, and threatening all life in the galaxy.

Review

How can I follow up on that introductory paragraph? Seriously this book is excellent. But more than that, it’s a lot of fun too. I think I’ve covered the general impressions I have about the worldbuilding, but just to expand a little more: we’re introduced to a rich, diverse galaxy with lots of distinct worlds and cultures, from flying castles to barren deserts to cyberpunk dystopias. It pays off a lot of the questions from the first book while still leaving a lot to mystery. It’s fully space opera, but also unashamedly straddling the line between SF and Fantasy, and leaning more towards the latter in places than something like Star Wars. Put simply, there’s magic here, and not the kind that gets explained away as “sufficiently advanced technology” but it is handled in a restrained manner. It’s another one of those books that gives me a “John Harris” vibe. Impressionistic, ethereal; some of the edges are a bit fuzzy and many of the shapes are improbable, and it all comes together in just the right way to tingle the brain and set the imagination running wild.

Ephemeris unfolds at a blistering pace, with action and excitement in every one its short chapters. Similarly to how I felt with Heliopause, perhaps in places it could have done with slowing down a bit and dwelling on certain things a little more before moving on to the next thing - particularly when it came to the relationship between Galla-Deia and Aeriod, I think we could’ve gone a bit deeper with it. There’s a lot of ideas here and a lot of things happening all at once with great drama.

There’s a huge amount of characters, many new and some returning. A lot of the side characters are really fun. I particularly enjoyed Sumond, who reminded me of Kamaji, the boiler-room servant from Spirited Away. The main character, Galla-Deia is great fun, too. She’s childlike, whimsical, naive and so very alive. And this is pretty much how she’s described by the other characters in the book, too. The author absolutely nailed it in that regard. Aeriod’s expansion in this book is intriguing. In Heliopause, we see a certain side of him and he gives off this mysterious impression but also like he’s a heroic figure. We see him revealed in a much more nuanced light here in Ephemeris; a window into his true motivations that may not be as selfless as they seemed. Though earnest, he’s much more morally grey character than we’re presented in the first book. It’s great to explore his and Galla’s relationship at the start, but as I said above, I would like to have gone a little deeper especially towards the two-thirds mark of the book.

The plot was enjoyable and kept my attention throughout. What we’ve got here is essentially a fantasy-style quest, and I do love me a quest. They are a great vehicle for travel, giving a compelling reason to move around and sight-see in the book’s universe. I particularly enjoyed how the first book fitted into the continuity here, and following it through to see what happened to the characters afterwards. Without getting into spoilers, If I were being really picky it could be said the fast pace gives the impression that one or two things just happen for the sake of it, to give the feeling of being out-of-control, chaotic etc… (why does my head go immediately to Farscape, here?) But based on how much this book pays off the mysteries of the first, I have no doubt these seemingly random occurrences will have an important part to play later on. It’ll be very interesting to see the pay off in Accretion and Luminiferous.

Overall, great second book in the series, even better than the first. Highly recommended.

Much as it pains me, I am taking a short break here, I’m moving on to finally finishing Gareth L Powell’s Embers of War trilogy, reading Light of Impossible Stars because it’s been sitting on my shelf for months at this point, so that will be my next review. After that, I’ll come back to the Questrison Saga with Accretion.