Book: The Wayward Souls of Avalon by Al Davidson
Reviewed by Rallie X
Rating: 3/5
Thank you to Dragon Bone Publishing and BookSirens for providing me with an eARC, this review and opinions are my own.
I gave this book three stars because I think it has an audience - that audience just isn't me, even though everything about the description led me to think it would be. But the two characters are insufferable! The same two conflicts are repeated over and over again - Jocasta gets hurt/has a Bad day (my fellow disableds know what I mean when I capitalize that) and Troy rescues and comforts him, Troy has an anxiety flare and Jocasta rescues and comforts him - and that's literally just the book. I'm not sure if A.L. Davidson decided that, since the journey takes a year the story needs to cover every month (or so) or if she really wanted to have that many scenes of the same thing over and over because she liked writing it.
Also, the age difference between Jocasta and Carlyle was weird and nonsensical. Age Carlyle up by 10 years and then it makes sense. Like you really want to tell me a 32 year old was in charge of the design of the ship/station that will save humanity? Sure he might have been capable of such a thing but no multibillion dollar corporation tasked with saving the wealthy elite is going to leave that to a 32 year old. And while Jocasta's character is very believably 22, the power differential between a 42 year old and a 22 year old dependent gets a little iffy. So like - either age them both up, or age up Carlyle and then account for an even more dynamic power differential that you're already writing.
This would have been a phenomenal short story (50-80 pages) or smaller novella (100-150 pages), but what A.L. Davidson wrote is a repetitive, bloated piece of scifi that is less cozy than it is insipid.
Also I'm sorry I spoke with six different people and all of them agreed it's weird as hell to call another person by their full name multiple times in the same conversation in general and especially when there are no other people to conceivably need to differentiate between. I've literally only seen it in one other place to the degree Davidson uses it, The Ship Who Sang by Ann McCaffrey (which is super interesting because if someone wanted to take the time to, they could write a comparative analytical piece about the two).
His gaze locked onto the starry expanse outside the front window, a torrent of emotions swelled in his chest. How beautiful a view it was. How terrifying and endless.
— Page 37