The Wilds by James Derry – Review

Cover- The Wilds — Received from author in exchange for honest review.

Published: June 20, 2016

Publisher: Self published

Genre: Science Fiction

My Rating: 2.5/5.0

Synopsis:

Walt and Samuel Starboard. Miriam and Virginia Bridge. Four travelers entered the mysterious City-Ship of Marathon, but only three made it out.

Now our heroes are faced with a new, more existential threat. An invader from Mother Earth has arrived on Idyll—an outlaw psychopath who will use Terran technology to establish himself as the planet’s ultimate creator-destroyer.

When I was still but a wee baby blogger, James Derry contacted me and asked if I would review his book Idyll. I was thrilled and of course I agreed because it was basically a space-western and I thought it was just the coolest that an author would contact me. It was a unique story and you can check out my review HERE. As I’ve grown as a blogger (I’m like a toddler blogger now) my reviews are a little more critical, which is a good thing! It means I know more of what I like and don’t like and I’m less hesitant to voice my opinions, which is what I’m here to do.

The Wilds is the sequel to Idyll and I definitely don’t recommend jumping into the series at book 2- be a good reader and start with the first. This installment takes place almost directly after the events of the first book and honestly, it didn’t take the direction I expected it to. Though I figured it would follow Walt, Samuel, Virginia, and Miriam, I did not expect a giant mostly computerized douchebag from Earth to show up and speak in all-caps. I also didn’t expect the little separate colony to convert to a polygamist commune quite so quickly. Apparently everything’s cool when you’re in space.

The storyline was interesting enough, aside from the utter corny-ness of Sol, the Earth-entity that I mentioned above. I cringed a little every time his dialogue showed up. The relationships between the characters were not subtle and felt forced much of the time. That, I feel, is the biggest area where there’s room for improvement. The storyline had a good pace and I was invested in what was going to happen next, so that was a huge redeeming factor.

Overall, I thought the story was decent and I definitely want to read the last installment to find out how the series is going to conclude.