Andrew from Jo Fletcher Books was generous enough to send me review copies of these titles along Karen Lord’s The Best Of Both Worlds.
Naomi was born in London, England, and grew up in Hong Kong, Liverpool and Saskatchewan. After spending the late nineties working in South Korea and travelling in Central America, Asia and Australia, she now lives in Brighton. Seoul Survivors is her first novel and Astra is her second.
I am afraid that Seoul Survivors wasn’t really my cup of tea. When it comes to science fiction, I like a really technological and scientific world with lots of action and a fast pace. I found this story to be a bit light on the actual sci-fi and too heavy on the characters and situations, but that’s just my preference. When I read any book, I do prefer to have one or two characters that I can root for and sadly, I found the main protagonists here to be unsympathetic and in the case of Sydney, annoying and Johnny, repellent. I have to admit that I got about halfway through and as I couldn’t see where the book was going, with a heavy heart I set it aside.
On the other hand, Naomi’s second book, Astra, was literally a whole different story. A very well developed and realised world, packed with rich characters from the main protagonist Astra, growing up in a future society which on the surface seems like an environmentally sustainable idyll where young people are raised and nurtured by the community in relative freedom of expression, learning and sexuality. However, there lurk dark undertones of a quasi-militaristic government who seek to control the upcoming generation by means of vaccination to make them more docile and amenable to living in this paradise. When Astra’s shelter mother Hokma takes her to one side and suggests that Astra’s intelligence and future prospects as a scientist may be adversely affected by this chemical intervention, their actions set in motion a path that puts them all in danger.
Reminiscent of Ursual K. le Guin’s Always Coming Home and elements of Cloud Atlas, as well as Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred thing, Naomi has created a believable and textured world where all is not as it seems. Astra promises to be the first in the series of The Gaia Chronicles and I for one look forward to the sequels.
Jay (volunteer and sci-fi geek)
