Eridan Vlasnof

Review of eBook

Jack Joystar once dreamed of being a cosmonaut, of visiting Mars, of traveling across the stars. He watched television shows about space and anticipated mankind putting aside petty differences and working together toward the exploration of the great beyond.

But that never happened.

And then, one eventful Thursday, the earth shook; fire and destruction engulfed the town. In the back garden, he discovered a tall structure wide enough for a person to fit inside it. Jack touched the structure; it liquefied around him and everything turned silver.

When he struggled to escape the structure, the structure opened and Jack found himself aboard the freighter ship “Iridescent” . . . in outer space.

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This short story, a prequel to Jack’s further adventures in “Joystar: Royal Encounters of the Third Kind,” introduces the main characters and reveals the process by which Jack finds himself far from Earth and partnered with three aliens aboard the “Iridescent.” There’s not much character development but Jack’s clever morphing from Earth-dweller to star traveler has some interesting moments.

This is a story in desperate need of an editor. Most of the issues are word-related: “racked” instead of “raked;” “too fan of spending time” instead of “too fond of spending time;” “eight feet tall” instead of “eight-foot tall;” can’t nobody help . . . these [and more] serve only to pull the reader out of the story.

It’s clear that there are adventures ahead for Jack, but the story here simply fails to garner sufficient interest to encourage readers to join the crew of the “Iridescent” and discover how Jack makes out in this new world.… (meer)