Earth Survives Series, Book 1
By Rex Roberts
© December 10, 2020, Pajama Therapy Books
ASIN: B08QCLJ6S6
Kindle Version, file size 4165 KB
Imagine a post-apocalyptic storyline where dark stuff is happening, a story wherein people are doing hard things to survive a global pandemic that wiped out 98% of the population, but that carries cozy overtones alongside the shadowy ones. That’s Lost Sentinel in a nutshell.
This is my third read by this same author (who writes under different pen names for different genres), and I got the same kind of feel from its pages. There is a strong ecofiction current running throughout—a thread which is, at its heart, the underlying event for the entire story—something I loved. Environmental issues are important, details we all need to be aware of, and fiction is a great way to bring them to the forefront of people’s minds. Only these story elements aren’t fictional. They’re real, and hard to manage.
But that’s only one element of Lost Sentinel, which also makes use of time travel. In addition, there are bits of romance (though no sex on the page), mystery, and gut-twisting danger. In a way, I got the occasional vibe from it like Lucifer’s Hammer, or Dies the Fire, but Last Sentinel is its own story. I say it has cozy overtones, but I don’t call it a cozy sci-fi because there are very definite, very high stakes in this book. And we see them challenged and threatened more than once. At one point in the story, tension got so thick I had to put down for a while. I saw where it was heading, and I didn’t want to go there. Not yet. (I was right, too; but that twist was necessary for the storyline, so I see why it was there.)
It’s easy to get hooked to these characters, and to their connections to one another. I could easily see how they felt like a family; surviving the apocalypse together tends to bond souls who work as a unit to create intentional community. I would like to think there would be groups made of people like them in a real post-apocalyptic world. It’s how I prefer to think, even though it might not be realistic. But despite the harsh conditions and murderous, self-serving individuals and groups they encounter, these characters keep hope alive with dreams of a better future. I mean, if everything is already in a shambles at your feet, why not try to rebuild it better than it was, right? That’s what Roberts presents in the pages of Lost Sentinel.
In the same way that Becky Chambers stories bring forth hope from loss, along with found family, and the possibility of dreams fulfilled, Lost Sentinel shines the light of a better way, and hope for the future across the shadows of death and life-altering change. Definitely recommended.