Review - The Awakening by Adair Hart

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

So a few random humans - The Stereotypical Doctor, the Stereotypical Innocent Child, the Stereotypical Redneck/Soldier (I think), and a random Indian get kidnapped by aliens. They are placed in a ship filled with other aliens from around the multi-verse  who have all escaped their holding pens and are probably going to kill said humans in the near future.

Fortunately there's a random stereotypical time-travelling alien and his stereotypically friendly, lovable robot there to save the day and lend a hand.

You know when you start a book, and are super-glad that it is relatively short? That was me with this novel.

This book reminded me a lot of Matthew Reilly's first book, Contest, where aliens from all over the universe are thrown into mortal combat with each other in a confined space. There were also healthy doses of Doctor Who tropes thrown in for good measure. However, the similarities soon ended.

Sure there were plenty of interesting and gruesome death scenes, which I did enjoy rather immensely. But then there was just so much stuff that either made no difference to the story, made no sense, or was so completely convoluted that my eyes began to glaze over.

- Any time Evaran (the aforementioned alien) began mansplaining (or is that aliensplaining) anything involving multiple universes, how he travels through time, and the laws which govern them. I just did not care.

- Wherever they wandered into an errant sub-plot about Evaran and the Mercenaries.

I would hazard a guess that more of the novel made no sense to me than the bits that did. I didn't buy, or understand why the humans were kidnapped in the first place; I guess humans were supposed to be Earth's apex predators, but these particular humans seemed like weak, inept, do-nothings.

Evaran was an interesting character, when he wasn't speaking pseudo-sciencey crap, and his robot sidekick V was quite cool, although there were a few too many "interpret what the human says literally" moments for my liking.

What it all boiled down too in the end was that it was neither overly original, or interesting. However, the bits that were interesting weren't original, and the bits that were original weren't all that interesting. I felt like it couldn't make up its mind whether it was trying to be survival horror or Doctor Who ripoff.

2.5/5 stars.