SPSFC4 Review: Orion by Aaron Frale

Blurb:

Orion is dead… again.

Whether death comes from a stab wound, a bullet to the brain, or just plain dumb luck, he always comes back.

He is glad to have the opportunity because a princess in each life seems to be in trouble. Whether she's a nurse in the Vietnam War or medieval English royalty…

…Orion is determined to win her over.

Review:

I read this book as part of the SFFI Insiders Team judging for SPSFC4.

Before we even get into the book, the first bit of content after the Table of Contents is a free book called Time Burrito, which has a calico cat standing on top of what looks like a breakfast burrito hurtling through space. The image alone already put me in a good mood, though I can tell you nothing about that book by Aaron Frale. Anyway, onto the actual book.

Sometimes I finish a book and I know there are thoughts in my head but I need to excavate them to find a coherent review, and unfortunately for my partner, this oftentimes requires him to listen to me talking about the book. So in describing Orion by Aaron Frale, my partner responded with ‘It sounds like Edge of Tomorrow.’ Having not seen Edge of Tomorrow, I’ll take his word for it and consequently you’ll have to too. Orion by Aaron Frale is allegedly like Edge of Tomorrow.

We follow Orion through three lives, though there have been countless more and we get snippets of some happening off screen. A world of mushrooms, or ‘Drive a car that has trouble staying on the road to get [the princess’] trophy, or feudal Japan’, for example. But mainly we follow Orion as a Roman soldier, a peasant and soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. This isn’t a spoiler, it’s kind of there in the blurb. 

What I found really interesting in this was that he could change these tiny details, certain actions of his, what he says but the wider story plays out as it always does. There is the Butterfly Effect, there is Chaos Theory and there is Orion’s life which keeps ending with him meeting Stabby and not getting the Princess-who-sometimes-isn’t-a-princess. 

What I found more interesting was that Orion keeps his memories from one life to the next and, with all the off screen lives that mean he’s not reliving these three in a linear revival, he’s got the skills learned from all other lives to keep making decisions to change the outcome. The outcome almost always being ‘Sorry, bro.’ then being stabbed in the face. Ok that actually made me laugh a lot. Let me explain, because it’s not the face stabbing that’s funny to be clear.

“The weird part was that Stabby said, “Sorry, bro.” I didn’t know it at the time, but “bro” wasn’t exactly in the Roman dictionary. Strange final words to hear for a person who gave his life for the glory of the Roman Empire.”

“I knew I should have recognized that “bro” wasn’t a medieval colloquialism.” 

These are great lines. I have no notes. I laughed. I’m also glad it’s addressed because nothing irritates me more than out of place language in a book. Like I kicked off once because someone swore in a very modern way when they were meant to be from 987ce. There were a lot of little laughable lines and moments throughout the book. The humour is clever, and more importantly it was fun, and because of that I didn’t mind revisiting the scenes we already knew the outcome of. 

Now I have to say, where it lost me was around the 80% mark. I spent over ⅔ of the book wondering ‘How is Frale going to explain this one?’ so it’s safe to say I didn’t see the ending coming. But that said, it kind of felt like ‘And he woke up and it was all a dream. Ooooooo.’ That’s not what happens for the record. But it felt like that. Still, I enjoyed the bulk of the book and the reveal as to what’s going on wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t quite for me. I also don’t know how else it could have been explained so maybe I should stop raising problems if I have no solutions. 

So basically, this was a fun, relatively quick (less than 200 pages) read that has you wondering why Orion is reliving so many lives, who is Stabby and why is there always a Princess, while you giggle along the way. Unless you’re too tough to giggle, then maybe you’ll chuckle?