Lost Amongst the Stars is a science fiction book by GJ Stevens. I know GJ from the Mynt Image Craft and Gift Fairs, where we and one other author often exchange ideas. GJ and I swapped our first sci-fi books with the idea of a review swap! Pay it forward, as they used to say about twelve years ago.

Lost Amongst the Stars

by GJ Stevens

On an unrecognisable world far from their home, the crew of interstellar freighter, the Mary May, find themselves stranded and alone.

Travis had always been a confident man, but everything changed when, stripped of his memories, he found himself naked and surrounded in a time long gone. When a chance encounter gave him hope that he might not be the only one in the same tragic predicament, he took control.

After seeking out the first of his crew and falling in love all over again with the battered space hulk they called home, they soon found the simple answer to their burning question wasn’t the right one. With the truth, all optimism fell away when the realisation hit that they only had a few hours to find their remaining friends before they’re all damned to live out the rest of their lives as strangers in a foreign world.

With their fate already on a knife edge before the local military added to their woes, can Travis overcome his fears and the obstacles pressed against him by the strange world to bring the crew together before they’re lost forever, or worse? (Goodreads)

My Review

What the blurb does not say, and with not much help from the cover, the reader will start this book finding a very familiar world indeed. It takes a while to get one’s head around to the protagonist’s perspective. This is not surprising, since he is suffering from memory loss, and is not the apparent narrator of the first chapter.

So having turned everything upside down, we can settle down to a really good adventure. The characters have been described for us by the ship’s computer, which is on the blink. It’s not going to get repaired until Travis, the captain, finds Miles, the computer genius. Miles, when found, will not be parted from his dog. Travis is mortally afraid of dogs. They’re different in the Southampton of his home world. This is not his home world. It looks very like 2020s Oxford, not his world where he was a captain in the space fleet…

I really enjoyed the utter madness of the chases around the Oxford area, looking for one crew member after another, avoiding the police, army and other emergency services. A&E is always friendly and helpful. The canoe chase is almost as good as MT McGuire’s barge chase, which is saying something. The characters tend to be a little flat, even the curvaceous ones, and while they eventually fill out along with their memories, I was still trying to place Travis whenever he was named. But maybe he is a stereotypical space captain, and supposed to be devoid of character!

It feels a little Whovian, possibly with the bizarre feel of the start of Hitchhiker, but it promises to be a really good series. It’ll be interesting to see where future accidental time displacement takes us.

Book Review | Lost Amongst the Stars
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One thought on “Book Review | Lost Amongst the Stars

  • 27 October, 2024 at 2:29 pm
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    Ooooh! Time wandering—just up your alley! Sounds intriguing, especially the canoe chase! Great review, with some lovely bit in there (the flat character bit…)

    Reply

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