Blurb:

THE LAST FRAGMENTS OF THE HUMAN RACE ARE FORCED TO ADAPT TO A DANGEROUS NEW WORLD OR FACE EXTINCTION.

When starship mechanic, Denton Castus, is caught in the destructive path of a devastating war, he abandons his home and seeks refuge on a distant planet. However, this new safe haven has undiscovered threats of its own. Eliana Veston, a scout preparing the planet for the refugees, struggles with a deadly pandemic that is killing off colonists. The hunt for a cure unleashes a new threat to humanity—the Sirens—mysterious beings with incredible powers and a deep hatred for invaders.

Review:

A few days ago, I was scrolling through the SFF Insiders library of books to review when this book caught my eye. Mainly because the cover looked interesting. There’s a lot of information in the cover about what you are going to read through this book. Then, I looked at the book blurb. Was sold on the idea after reading the whole blurb, so I sent an email over to the author, and within a day, had the ARC copy on my kindle ready for my mind to read instantly. Social Media thought differently so it took me a bit longer to read this book, but finish reading it, I did. If you want to read a space opera tale that involves psychotic psychic aliens, bird people, and humans trying to figure what the hell is going on on the planet that they landed on to build a refugee city on, I’d hand you this book, a box of snacks and several bottles of the drink of your choice, point you to a book reading shelter (a box that has all the physical things you need without getting distracted by the outside world), and tell you to get comfy while reading this book.

Did I enjoy reading “In the Orbit of Sirens”? Yes, yes I did. 

What did I enjoy about the book?

First of all, the people inside of “In the Orbit of Sirens”. Denton, while I was at first questioning what role he had to play, slowly grew on me and by the end of the book, I wanted to see how well he’d do in the later books. Also, I like how he interacts with others. He’s the nice guy who you always want to be with because you know it’ll be fine. Until he goes off and does something extremely reckless and then you’re wondering why you are cheering for him again. Then there’s Eliana. She’s the more withdrawn of the two, and more emotionally in anguish over what one of the older planet inhabitants has done to her. Still, she slowly opens up to how Denton treats her. Their relationship is, to put it mildly, interesting.

The other characters, who shall not be named, also felt real and tangible enough that I could place myself in there and view it from a new perspective, all the while holding a conversation or two with those within the book.

Then, the setting and plot. Oh, how much fun it is to watch people explore an alien planet. How fun it is watching them fail to explore an alien world. How fun it is to watch them eventually integrate with the alien world before something new comes along and tosses all they know out the window. That’s the setting. The plot however. Oh, how the plot decided to go off the rails as soon as I thought I had the plot figured out.

We have three timelines in the plot. Denton’s timeline gets moved to the present day relatively quickly, so the reason why he’s in the book gets explained away rather quickly. Eliana’s, who has always been in the present time frame, and an unknown third party whom I won’t name for spoiler reasons who’s off doing his own thing and we get snippets of what he’s doing every once and a while.

Then the plot itself. It starts off with exploration of an alien planet, and ends with the book running its own version of Doom, glowing creatures who could’ve come from hell itself against humanity's last hope. In the middle of all that the plot twirls you around, shoots you with a laser rifle, and decides to then finally bandage you up to then toss you back into a shoot out. Was fun experiencing that, I definitely did not want to sit in the corner and stare at my Kindle for a few hours reading a few parts of this book because of what the plot pulled off.

The technology within this book gave me two thoughts while reading it:
1. “Yup, we humans could build this if we decided to put our minds into it.”

2. “Oh God above, why does AI have to exist while I’m reading this?”

Other than that, some tech felt out of this world, but considering it’s alien tech, fair enough.The technology in this book is mentioned more in passing than being a focus point. I got snippets here or there about what the tech was built out of or what it did, when people unfamiliar with the technology being used asked the users of said technology.

Now, to the second last part. The psychological horror of this book. I know it’s not advertised as being horror, but man, did it do a great job of amping up the unknown phantoms of the large, unfamiliar planet. From the bird people yelling out great piercing warnings about a city of dead to blackouts and apparitions that only one person could see. At first, I thought nothing of it. That was until I kept reading and fully understood the implications of the unknown phantoms, and what that meant as a whole. From that point forward, I thought humanity was done for. Even at the end of the book, the phantom persisted, so it’s leaving us, the readers, an open ending as to what that phantom will do. 

Lastly, the art that separates each part of the book. Each one highlights a piece of the upcoming 100 or so pages and it gives great insight into what we, as readers, can expect from the world.

Now to what I didn’t like. Which, in all fairness, isn’t a lot. Just a few moments of writing that made me wonder exactly what was meant, that then got cleared up after I read those moments again. 

As always, if you are here at the end of the review, thank you for reading it and I hope this review has helped you find the next book for you to read or to add to your TBR pile. If not this review, then maybe others here will have reviews for books that you’d find more to your liking. Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon or goodnight!