Shadow Patterns of Melt – Book One by J. R. P. Fogg – Review by Roxsanne Lesieur.

Shadow Patterns of Melt – Book One by J.R.P. Fogg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bishr and Nialla are specialists in space travel, they have been through all the training and now have been in charge of their own ship the Metronome for years transporting cargo and people across the universe for a fee, they make a brilliant team with Bishr being a comms genius and Nialla, a whiz with physics, sometimes she is even known as a savant, she is just that good. They love the freedom which comes from traversing wormholes and jumps between the 400 habitable planets, as well as the 30 which are in the “gration” process and they want to continue to live, laugh and love in their own time.

As they are flying towards their next destination, everything seems to be going to plan until Bishr ill and Nialla has to both look after the other and the ship, this is not easy as there are only the two of them, but somehow they manage. As he recovers, Bishr goes through the correspondence and highlights one message in particular about a Stratum Three planet which is going to be listed as open for gration, he finds the images of the clouds scudding over the surface of the planet relaxing and so saves the skim for later, however, as they are discussing it, the jump they are planning goes wrong.

Nialla and Bishr encounter some issues and between the calcs, the dishes and their superluminal flight, they have to make some decisions which will not just affect them, the shadows which these decisions cast over the rest of the known universe will also come into play, but what will happen and can their love, work, laugh and love mantra keep them safe, or will their unplanned discovery, the history of their parents legacies and the future of mankind in space rip them apart? This is a dystopian sci-fi of universal proportions as split second decisions mean the difference between life, death and everything in between, in this race to calculate, formulate and experiment with unknowns runs its course, in this new and immersive reality.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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