Description/Book Blurb:

Book 1 of The Movement Trilogy

Earth is on the brink of ruin. Great storms destroy cities. Rising seas reshape the continents. Afraid for its survival, mankind constructs a fleet of space stations in orbit, and steps off-world.

Among the humans fighting for their future are Micah Sparrow, a widower who uncovers a plot to return mankind to the dark ages; Tasneem Kyoh, who undergoes life-extension treatments and begins the search for humanity’s next home; and David Dewbury, a prodigy who believes he knows where that home might be.

But in space, the rules aren’t the only things that have changed. Man himself has changed, and with the Earth in tatters behind him, man turns his attention to the one thing left to destroy: himself.

Book 2 of The Movement Trilogy

Earth has become an artifact of history. Children are no longer taught that it is the birthplace of mankind. For them, history begins with the Citadel, the enormous institution that governs the system with a heavy, vicious fist.

Three hundred years have passed since the events of Book 1. The Machine class, oppressed and broken, has scattered throughout the system, building outposts and colonies on every surface they can find. They rely upon the Onyx class, the privileged ones, for sustenance.

But the most brutal attack in human history relights the fuse of war between the two classes, and rebellions break out on every moon, planet and rock between Earth and the stars. And somewhere in the chaos, Tasneem Kyoh and David Dewbury still fight for mankind’s future… a new Earth, and a new beginning.

Review 3 of 5 Stars

The story is interesting if a little slow at times and it skips around a lot.  I read these two books one after the other as neither is very long and they have kind of joined together in my mind as they could easily have been one book with Parts 1 and 2.  So I’m just going to review them in that manner as well.  Tasneem Kyoh and David Dewbury are the characters that tie this story together through all the skipping around as they are the only two around for the 500 years covered in these two stories.

The writing style was peculiar in that the author chose not to use quotation marks for dialogue in either book.  I don’t know if he was trying to save ink on his printer or what, but I found it somewhat annoying while reading.  I can’t think of any reason to choose to write dialogue without proper punctuation unless perhaps quotation marks have committed some horrible crime in the future and have been outlawed.  On the whole it was distracting to me as a reader.  I would have given it a 4 if this had not been so.

Nevertheless, once I got past the grammar the story was really pretty well done and I found it interesting.  In the first part, The Settlers, humans are fleeing Earth to live in orbital space stations constructed to save the population from the greed and lack of foresight humankind has shown which has resulted in the planet’s weather, volcanoes, etc. being destabilized to such a point that it’s becoming unsafe to live on the planet.  Having just been saved from certain death on the planet below that has been destroyed at their hands they are more willing to pull together to try to make a go of continuing the species.

By the time we move to the second part of the story, The Colonists, humankind is once again suffering under greed and corruption from those who feel obligated to try to control others in a totalitarian state where the Onyx class lords over the Machine class.  People are mad and revolution is in the wind (or the air filtration systems as the case may be).  I just watched Elysium the other day so it is difficult not to draw a comparison between the two story lines.

All in all the story itself was good and I was pretty interested.  As I mentioned above, I would have given these a 4 if not for the distraction of the improper punctuation or lack thereof.