Earth-Kin Review

 

Book: Earth-Kin
Author: Pauli Kid
Pages:  770
Hard Core Scale: 3/4
Normal Scale: 8/10
Publish Date: 2021
About: Xanni, the captain of the Mudpuppy and her scrapping crew come across a wreck with secrets that may change their lives and all of space forever. That is if they can survive to figure it all out first before other interested parties.

Review: Pauli again crafts another fine winded music box. Its architypes and tropes sliding comfortably and well thought along their tale formula trajectories. As always some things of convenience that may make me raise a brow but the result is a Sandhri smack to my nose as usual "its a good story". If it works it works and there is no harm in a story filled with pugboo goodness as tight as this. That is the thing; the world needs more stories like this. More stories of that “goodness,” none artificial, and free of market PR. The cast enjoyable and diverse. A nice mixture of imaginative SF and a bit of hard science crunch, especially in biology and anthropology which was done well and appreciated. The works rhetoric fine in its themes to audience, important themes we need more today. I really, have not thought through a book as much of this.  I usually wrinkle my nose at obfuscating stupid evil, but through all the recent events, perhaps Pauli is right. Evil is simply that, obfuscating stupidity. New evil is rare, just the same stupid and imagine-less, greedy, racist, power-hungry, apathetic, boring crop age to age. Makes what I do as a writer even more weird and nth layer of fantastic in that old definition of the word aka detached far from reality. Point being the world needs more work like this. The respect to people and their diversity across a spectrum of forms, colors, identity, gender, biological sexes, and attraction is a wonderful sticking point to our diversity as real people. A beautiful cacophony of humanity stretching back and building our world and history tarnished by such obfuscation stupid evil.   In this regard it is also that great power of this fandom we all share, that diversity overcoming any obfuscation of identity.  … and how many times am I going to use the word obfuscation.
                Not that everything is dandy. There are some long weird list transitions sometimes even back to back in some early chapters that probably just could have been cut to save space and pacing as they slog things a bit. Pauli eventually disengages from their use and they disappear, and they are not a common habit of their usual writing. There is also a lot of Pauli in here. Usually that much insertion or injection of author permeating a work leads to me wanting to break out the reaper's scythe for breaking the rhetoric barrier of author, text, and audience that thoroughly, but at the same time there is a great sense of catharsis in that purpose and I cannot give the reaper's due. As writers we all leak into our work at times, the styles that become ours and the themes we love become it. In this case though there is simply just a lot of author in there and it borders a bit on the jarring and sense of disbelief, but Pauli at least jumps the gap in concern of the usual issues associated when a book orbits to close to its author star. There is no suery here, just that positive catharsis that speaks volumes of legitimate empathy and care to audience reflecting many in their struggles in real life.  Probably not even noticeable, unless the reader has good knowledge of the author. Somethings get a little cliche in contact, but it stays in that fun realm and admit close to a cliche I don't enjoy very much there are some staples that keep everything together and flowing so I'll leave it off the hook. On another hand Pauli has reached an enlightenment with combat description hard to achieve, a medium gait that works very well. They keep that fast pace with a mixture of fast scenes and thick description equaling … I guess medium description? This give a far more real pacing for combat usually not seen in the written medium while maintaining that good description for the audience to see.  

As far as the comment on anthropologists claiming the unknowable object as religious.  I felt that joke.

Well overall, funny, action packed, imaginative, and filled with that Pauli Kidd goodness.  It’s a Pauli Kidd SF treat, go buy yourself a copy.

A final note on Cover: This is a cover I can respect. Simple stars to draw audience, not a uncanny CGI abomination against reality. See it is easy to advertise to me, a good summary and stars on your cover is all you need.

Earth-Kin Cover, 2021, Kitsune Press