No More Lonesome Blue Rings – Book Review
If you haven’t figure it out by now, I’m a huge fan of Michael W. Lucas as a tech writer. The thing is, he also writes fiction, and his fiction (so far) is just as amazing. I’ve purchased and read both books currently available in the Immortal Clay series (Immortal Clay, and Kipuka Blues.) These two books are an excellent length for a short novel, and the premise of their story is engaging. I will probably do a review on each or both at some point in the future.
However, today I am going to review a very short book entitled “No More Lonesome Blue Rings.” This book is in a collection of books called the “Montague Portal” series. I’ve been sitting on the fence about snagging these books, because I am currently in the middle of a rather large tome from another author. That said, I receive this book as part of my “thank you” package for sponsoring the PAM Mastery book at the level it needed to be sponsored (in my humble opinion.) I’ve been asking him off and on randomly for a few years now to write that book, so as soon as I saw the sponsorship go live, I pulled the trigger on it with much gratitude and enthusiasm. Apparently, I “oversponsored” in Mr. Lucas’ opinion, so he sent me some extra books when the print copy became available. “No More Lonesome Blue Rings” was among the books received.
I was surprised at how short some of these books were, so I set aside my current reading project, (“”) and did some research on what the reading order should be for the Montague Portal series. Since this was the first one listed, it’s the first one I read. It took me an evening.
The book only has 58 printed pages, but the story moves at a pace that makes it hard to put down. The main character, Sherry, has a genetic disease that causes deteriorated nervous system function. The Montague Corporation has found a way to open portals to alternate universes, and among those is one where the disease is “paused” while visiting it. Sherry has been sent there to help manage her condition. The book is written in a perspective that mostly focuses on her internal dialogue. She is very coherent and intelligent, but she can’t communicate or move around well due to her condition. All of the patients diagnosed with various diseases wear a colored band to indicate which disease group they belong to. All of them wear a red band, except Sherry. Her’s is blue. This partially explains the title of the book.
Without giving away the details (because the story is so short, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone,) the general gist is that she ends up on an adventure to save herself and her best friend from an attack by the local inhabitants, ends up surviving her encounter, and manages to improve her situation with the Montague Corporation overseers without losing her humanity.
The only complaint I have is that the story was too short. I love the premise of the Montague Corporation Portals to other Universes, because the possibilities for different stories is endless, but everything gets tied together neatly in the end.
I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series, (“Sticky Supersaturation.”) I anticipate that all of the books in this series will be well worth the read, but I recommend this book on its own merits, even if it is a touch short.
5 out of 5 stars for content and premise.