Space Slugs by Frances Pauli (Space Slugs #01)

Space Slugs by Frances Pauli
Genre: Space Opera, Fantasy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

DESCRIPTION: When Murray receives another phony wedding invitation from her galaxy hopping sister, Zora, she hops the first flight to an obscure planet at the edge of the civilized universe. But instead of a wedding, Murray finds her sister imprisoned by an alien overlord. With the assistance of a mysterious android and the universe's last living space slug, the women end up the run in a stolen space ship with half the galaxy in hot pursuit. Thanks to Zora, it's the least desirable half. Maybe Murray will get lucky, and the crash landing will kill her.

REVIEW: I obtained this book free. Unfortunately, I don't recall if it was from the author's own website or from Smashwords. At any rate, because I obtained it free and because Frances Pauli is an independent author, I vowed to write a review after reading it.*

Then surprised myself finding that I quite liked it! Space Slugs is fun, light-hearted, and original.

When I began, I was not expecting much, that impression initially formed on the basis of this ebook's poor formatting. Style and presentation are important to me, and I suggest the book be put through a decent editor to check for errors and for general clean-up operations. (The editor that comes with Calibre would serve.)

I also suggest an editor of the old-fashioned kind (i.e., a human) go over the dialogue structure. Too many times it was unclear to me who was doing the talking. Such confusion for readers interrupts a story's pacing. Merely correcting the paragraph breaks, punctuation, and he-saids/she-saids would address that problem.

Apparently, there is a sequel to this book, titled Slug Opera. While I'm disinclined to buy that book, I am curious to know if its dialogue structure shows improvement and how the story ends.

If you're someone who wants science, hard or soft, in their science fiction, then this book is not for you. There's virtually none of it here. If you're looking for a light-hearted, somewhat idiotic space-opera romp in a sort of Jetsons future, you might give this one a try.

*I do not review every book I read. I'd guess the ratio of reviews written, as of the date I began writing reviews, to books read would be roughly 75 percent. Books that get a 'meh' reaction from me tend not to be motivating enough to put virtual pen to virtual paper.

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