Dark Ouroboros

by Michael Barley

[HekArtemis]

I feel bad for giving it 4 stars since it had a perfect 5.0 average rating before I came along and ruined it. But I did have a few small issues with it, so can't really give it 5 stars. Sorry.

It's a good story, a great scifi romp with a good bit of mystery and Norse mythology thrown in for fun. I honestly thought it was going to be a kind of horror book before going in, but no it really isn't. It probably could have been, it does have some good creepy monsters and all, but it's entirely too casual and lighthearted to be a horror.

That is actually one of the problems I had with this novel - the casualness of it. The writing itself was fine, but the character dialogue was.... off. It was super casual but had this formalness to it that was weird. Every character seemed to go way out of their way to make sure the one they were talking to was comfortable, agreeable, not offended, not upset etc and after a while it just started to seem massively fake. Like sure I can see people doing this to make sure everyone is in agreement - but in a close knit crew it made it feel like they didn't know each other at all. The interjections of old phrases from 'our time' which in book was 500+ years ago, and then having other characters go "huh? what was that? what does that mean?" got a bit old too.

Among the crew of the ship there were only two relationships present, and they were both lesbian relationships which was interesting and unexpected. They were both already established so we didn't have to deal with any angst or jealousy or ridiculousness. That was nice.

I have mixed feelings about the answers to the mysteries that were present in the story. The idea of Ouroborous being a living and malevolent thing was quite interesting, I liked that and think it could have made for a good horror story. Though it did create an impossible situation. On the other hand the discovery of a portal to Andromeda and meeting aliens who can teach people to communicate via telepathy and can pop up to save the day at the end was a little too much for me. I think maybe if it removed the communication part and the turning up to save everyone, which became the obvious answer way before it happened it could have worked better. But overall, there was just too much happening, too many crazy answers and revelations.

Over all though it was a good fun scifi book with an interesting premise.