Three Episodes In- Shadow

I like to give a serial three episodes before I decide if I want to continue. First impressions can be deceiving, both for good and bad. Excluding stories that have been recommended to me, those usually turn out good, “Shadow” by NovaGirl93 is the first where I want to read episode 4.

The prose is strong and the main character is intriguing. Vai is a kid out of time preparing to go onto an unknown future of life aboard a research vessel. Its revealed over the first few episodes that he went into stasis 80years before, when the galaxy was embroiled in a massive war. Now those warring aliens, K’thaktra, are free from their psychotic war drug and living peacefully among the rest of the Gathering. And Vai has become friends with one. Sort of.

There’s a bit of a backstory overload at points but it does serve the present action enough to not fall into the “infodump” trap. As Vai attempts to rescue his friend, Thrissko, from a gang we learn about the war, his past and his time in stasis, though not yet how or why he was put in. Through a bit of background news feed, we learn about the Shadow, a warship that has been converted to a research vessel that Vai’s father will serve on. Cleverly, this warship last saw use during the same war that raged when Vai went to sleep.

The rest of the cast so far is also intriguing. Warpaint a Mechatronic (don’t call him a robot) is snarky and overly protective, thinking he’s protecting a 97-year-old, given that’s Vai’s technical age. We don’t learn much about Thrissko yet, only that he made some deal with this gang out of desperation when he learned Vai was leaving. It remains to be seen if he’ll stick around in the story but I hope so.

I gave this four and a half stars on Top Web Fiction because it definitely fit the bill for “Compelling”.  I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.