Jump Rider

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

"If you are young and don't dream of space, then toil on your soil forever", the legendary Hopkins II once said. And whether you are a rebellious cat or an orphaned human, you dream of jumping between worlds to see the wonders of the galaxy: the space elevators, sunsets on resort worlds, or exotic foods. But in reality, they are struggling with run-down ships, strange passengers, and foremost, being broken.This is a slice-of-life SF story of two young jump pilots, one cat (woman) and the other a human. Told across alternating volumes, each of them is navigating life in a large galaxy, with lots of side stories and lore. While the science is ashard as FTL travel can be, the true focus is on character interaction and the small moments. Expect a journey, not a shoot 'em up.

For the moment, the story is completed with volume 9. There are further ideas and there is an end planned too. But I will need time to write it properly.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2023
Author: prissi

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.0/ 5.0
Followers: 60
Views: 56,436

Chapters(88 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(3)

ThatWriterGuyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
For starters, I read the first seven chapters, which confusingly is Volume II. This review will cover that volume. Also, a review swap.
Overall: I'd say this story is worth a read. It's not an action story, with its main focus being on a short trip with a mysterious being. This is not my area of specialty, so I'll generously give it a 5 star review to make up for the poor score it currently has.
Style: 5/5. The way the work is written is easy to get into. It's a short story that flows concisely. I'm not a reader of short stories typically, but I have to say it was enjoyable to read. The author knew how to make a short plot about two people meeting.
Story: 5/5. The story has a human boy who grew up away from humans meeting a mysterious yet human looking woman. I won't spoil the reveal, but she isn't who she seems to be at first. The author does an interesting job of writing someone who is physically human but has been away from the rest of his species his entire life. He's clueless about human things, though it was a bit absurd that he didn't know what bones were.
Grammar: 4/5. This was the story's weakest point. To be fair, English probably wasn't the author's first language, so there is some leeway. However, there are cases of tense mismatches within a sentence, two articles next to each other, typos, bad quotation marks, and some misplaced capitalization. The story is readable as you can generally ignore these errors.
Character: 4.5/5. Marik is a boy who was raised by insectoid aliens without human contact. He reads like an awkward and naive kid due to his upbringing. He does come off as a bit dense, such as the aforementioned lack of knowledge about bones, which he should conceivably know due to being human, hence visibly having bones such as teeth. Jerka, the mysterious woman, is mysterious. The lack of information about her is a feature, not a bug. Overall, they're okay characters. I read far worse, but I've also read better.
TomBlackRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
... I mean, Hard SciFi, spaceships, AND Slice of Life? How does that even work? But, yep. It's all there.
The story doesn't have a lot of what would be considered real action. Which doesn't mean that there isn't always something going on. The characters are consistent, if more than a little odd. Of course, the oddness looks to be quite deliberate, and is part of the overarching flavor of the tale. After five chapters, I'm still not quite sure who they are, or what their motives might be, as their histories are unfolding slowly.
And the tale. Here, I feel it necessary to point some things out that set this piece apart from many I see. The author has obviously spend far more time than is reasonable building his universe. He knows the universe's tech, how it works, how it fails, and how to fix it. That's more than most writers bother with.
There's a lot of food. The characters eat together, they prepare food, they talk about it. This is something else I don't often see in hard scifi. The mechanics of it work into the bargain.
Difficult to judge the story overall. So far, it's proceeding in a logical and entertaining manner. The long plot has yet to make an appearance, but given the length of the fiction, I wouldn't really expect it to, at least not this early.
If the story has one notable flaw, it's the grammar. As a native English speaker, it's quite obvious to me that the author is not. Sentence structure and modes of address can be a bit jarring if the reader doesn't understand where they're coming from. Probably not a real issue here on RR, as we seem to be an international bunch.
The issue isn't major, and it doesn't really detract from the story. And, would be more than competent in the author's original language, at least from what I remember of it. In fact, much of it can be ascribed to the characters being from far off, and speaking in their patois, rather than ours.
Overall, I can feel safe in recommending it.
MissAlexandrinaRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
For clarity, I'm at Chapter 5 as of the time of reviewing - doubtless I'll come back and update as I get further along.
I'm still at the early stages of the story, but so far I'm enjoying it a lot. The romance budding between Marik and Jerka is satisfying, and their vastly different backgrounds are making for an interesting dynamic - I'm looking forward to seeing it play out further. And while narratively it's still early doors, there's a sense of something at play here, and - most importantly - the world feels lived in. Thought out.
The story is advertised as being character-first, and the characters are definitely a strong suit. (Especially Marik and Jerka; Simon, thus far at least, is pleasing enough but not especially developed beyond the AI interface). I'm an adherent to the idea that you simply cannot have a great story without great characters, and it bodes well for the story that these characters are already well-realised.
Structurally, it's third-person limited, a structure I'm fond of myself. It works especially well when we get to see exactly how Marik's upbringing and experiences interact with the world Jerka is showing him. He's the sheltered everyman through which we're going to learn about the world.
There are a few minor quibbles grammatically (namely: occasional inconsistencies between presenting numbers as words or numerals - most evident in Chapter 5, where in the midst of describing the state of four engines, engine three alone is written as a word). Additionally, characters very frequently open their dialogue with the name of the character they're speaking to. This is great for orienting the reader with regards to who's speaking, but it has the drawback of sometimes making the longer spells of dialogue feel slightly stilted.
All in all, though, this is a promising piece. I will be reading on for sure.