Author: Kenneth S. Murray
Released: 2013
Rating: 2.5/6
Basic Plot: The Second Creation weaves together two stories; a life ending comet strike on earth, and inter-galactic war within the Realm of the Galaxies.
Research by Sandia National Laboratories Comet Impact Simulations brings incredible reality, and biosphere life begins a new human story.
Dunge Katorsay, an Apostle of the Anti-Christ, leads his forces from the Draco Constellation to defeat the realm and become its chairman.
Brian Hudson and Charlotte Tennyson are introduced as earth embryos. Both are born years later on another planet.
The ending above the earth, as their forces collide, is a horrific battle between the Anti-Christ and the second coming of a God child.
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Mistreatment of the Bisexual
This part really pissed me off. If I hadn't been reading from a Kindle I might've thrown the book across the room. Now I may be too close to the issue, but I could give less than a shit. Charlotte Tennyson is a bisexual but at no point is she ever reassured by someone that she isn't abnormal. Hell, she never seems to come to peace with that part of herself. As a bisexual, it was beyond important to feel comfortable with myself. So to see someone struggling and not getting reassured...yeah, it wasn't nice. With a small re-write of this sub-plot, this could be a great part of the book. Last thing about this part: Charlotte seems to hint that bisexuals aren't part of this future and that people are either gay or straight. So that shows that she is broken by the standards of this society. We never get someone else talking about how bisexuality is looked at in this society so Charlotte's views are the only ones we get.
This Was His Debut Sci-Fi Novel
With that in mind, I tried to judge this novel less harshly than I wanted to. I know how complicated sci-fi is, being a huge sci-fi fan, and that newcomers to the genre can have trouble. With my alien species I like there to be differences in them. Not just skin color or scales instead of skin, but shapes. Look at Star Wars or Animorphs (books, not the tv show) for examples of some really well done alien species. However, world building for a sci-fi universe can be extremely hard. The novel is a good first step into the genre and improvements can be made in future sci-fi novels, if he chooses to write them.
Confusing Dialogue
The thing with the dialogue in this is that a character will start to explain something and then it would switch to the thing being described to you by the narrator. As I haven't read any of his books before this, I don't know if it was just this book or if it's a long running problem. If you're going to start having a character explain something, let the character continue to explain it. There are exceptions, but there were no exceptions in this novel. Also some of the book seemed to be moved along by long explanations instead of it being shown.
Final Thoughts
I met the author at a Dunkin Donuts so this is my second review where I'm scared I'll piss him off. Authors like Stephen King or Stephenie Meyer I have no problems writing about because I'll never meet them. This was a decent stab at sci-fi, though I think the pacing could've been better. Plus some editing of where to put quotation marks as that did become a problem as the novel went on. I will be reading more of this author's works later.
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