Deep Crossing by E.R. Mason

Deep Crossing

Review of the novel Deep Crossing by E. R. Mason

Published by Kindle on 9^th July 2012.

Cost: £0.00

ISBN  (Kindle Edition – 342 pages)

I enjoy Science Fiction and found this story by E.R. Mason on Kindle. For me a story has got to have pace and be captivating, but this story failed to live up to the promotional blurb. This is the second story in a series of three, so I came into a series that should have developed the characters and possible expectations for the reader. It’s not easy to follow page numbers on the Kindle, instead it lets you know what percentage you are through the story, but when reading I like to finish a chapter and in most instances this was eight Kindle pages, but there were a few chapters with 20 pages.

The main character is Adam Tarn and as much of the story is written in the first person, we see the world through his eyes. However, the style of telling the story is not consistent depending on the involvement with other characters, but it is led by Tarn and his leadership instincts move the story on.

Tarn is given command of a refurbished spaceship called the Griffin; it’s been modified by the Nasebians, an intelligent race of people that also live on Earth, and the mission is to retrieve a Nasebian item far out in space beyond a distance that the Nasebian race can travel. Over a third of the book details how the crew of eight are recruited and their training on a flight simulator. It’s in Chapter 17 on the first test flight of the Griffin that the crew help a stranded ship and we learn of their individual skills in an emergency. Eventually they set off on the planned mission; on route they land on a planet where they lose a crew member to a large flying insect; find themselves disoriented in a void; and finally arrive at a distant planet. The planet is given the name Earth II; not only is it an early version of Earth, but it has the crew’s doubles, which they use to solve a problem they encounter.

This brief insight into the story will quickly have fans of Star Trek and Star Gate thinking I've heard this before, and this was how I felt. When it started to happen I began to lose interest in the story and the skill of Mason and his ability to write a captivating Science Fiction story. Individual characters are well described with their oddities and Tarn questions if all of them should go on the mission; he builds up a great working relationship with the character RJ and Mason manages this well. After achieving the mission objectives the story seems to come to an abrupt end as the spaceship is quickly returned to Earth, but leaves an opening for the next book.

If I was disappointed by the story-line it was added to by the poor spelling and grammar, which got progressively worse as the story progressed. There were also serious faults with text layout on the Kindle – gaps between words and text in the middle of a sentence defaulting to a gap of two or three lines – it detracted from the story and it was difficult to understand how a publisher would ‘print’ a book with such serious errors.

I'm not in a rush to read the other books in the series, and if I had paid a typical price of £7.99 for the paperback book I would have been very disappointed, however, it was a free Kindle book. Rating: 2 stars

Dr James Sheppard

23 February 2015