Book Review: Onliest

Amazon Cover

Onliest by J. Daniel Batt

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

She’s all alone aboard a spaceship bound for a new life. Or is she?

Aboard the interstellar ship Olorun, now drifting awry and silent, a girl named Syn has awoken. Alone on a ship littered with the decaying bodies of the dead crew, Syn has scraped together a thin life with only a cranky AI bot named Blip and a fiercely loyal tiger named Eku for companionship.

Unbeknownst to Syn, she is not the only one to have awoken aboard Olorun. Trapped in a much darker, and less well-provisioned part of the ship, tormented over the years as they’ve struggled just to exist, others have now discovered Syn’s idyllic world and will do anything to make her home theirs.

 

MY REVIEW

A science fiction novel with a young protagonist but not “YA” (young adult).

Syn was born/decanted alone, raised by a machine named Blip, on an empty colony ship crossing the vastness of space. Signs of the colonists deaths, both violent and quiet, can be seen throughout the silent, unchanging grounds. Then one day something changes – a bot, just like Blip, enters their world – dead … but newly dead. Where did it come from? Chasing down the origin makes Syn question everything, including herself.

This well structured science fiction keeps moving, creating both realism and mythology of a failed colony ship traveling between the stars. It is beautiful and layered. Characters develop and the ending satisfies.