KRAKOOM!!!

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Judas-12 duo Samson is a ballistic engineer aboard Caliban Station, a mining rig in orbit around Pluto. Judas has known nothing but Caliban Station his entire life - he was grown here, raised here, and will die here. Judas's job is to fling asteroids at Pluto until it breaks in half.

A speculative science drama.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2024
Author: bstdev

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 80
Views: 39,614

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(4)

GrailerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The right tone can be hard to find on Royal Road. This story fits my bill for a good tone. It also doesn’t have the author being too present in the work, which is great.
Solid writing and a solid plot. Managed tension well. Read over a couple days.
Will definitely be checking out other work by this author to see if the quality is the same there.
LetsMakeBelieveRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I want to preface by saying thank you to the author because this is frankly some of the best Sci-Fi I've read in a while. Now for a review by someone who doesn't know how to write a review:
Work I found similar and maybe you would enjoy if you read these:
As far as sci-fi goes, I have personally been a big fan of more hard sci-fi and if I had to compare this to anything, my first impression so far is a awesome mixture of The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey and Asimov's Robot Series. I think if you ever read and enjoyed novels such as Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, or even (and this one is a bit of a stretch, but I am reminded of it) Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein you may find this to be enjoyable. If you have read any of those above novels/series, I encourage you to just give the first 2-4 chapters of this web novel a shot, they're short so you don't need to feel like you are slogging through a chapter, and if it's not your thing, then I wish you luck on your journey to find another interesting web novel to read.
Literary Elements (that I found really cool and unique):
I want to now touch on everything the author has done right and maybe offer my own thoughts. Firstly, the world(s) building (quite literally) and the situation of what is going on is incredible. It's hard to discuss this without spoilers, but let's say I have never seen perspectives that would be so far apart from each other (that is purposely vague), and I think this is the back bone of the story that keeps me intrigued more than anything. Having multiple characters through which the author tells a story is often a double edged sword because on one hand you can really flesh out the world and add a real sense of scale as to what is happening in the world, but at the same time, it's easy to make one perspective far more intriguing to follow along with then the other, and as a reader you fall into this reluctance(?) of just wanting to follow along with the
shiyahRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Just a very solid fic. I wish it could be longer and satisfy my desire to explore all the rabbitholes in the setting and plot, but there's a lot of discipline in sticking to the core narrative.
And it's a good core narrative. Two stories are told here: a near-future exploration of early artificial intelligence and a far-future labor dispute turned sour. A hope for AI-as-companion-and-peer clashes against AI-as-manager-and-servant. Quite hopeful despite some bleakness.
The writing is technically solid. The characters are fairly well-defined despite the short length. The narrative is woven between both story threads in nice digestible chunks (hard to go wrong with "meanwhile, back at the ranch" storytelling).
Not really 100% sold on the narrative conclusion of the Anesthesia Graves plotline. I feel like there's a bit of a narrative disconnect between it and the epilogue.
I hope people will give this story a chance even if it falls well outside the bounds of the typical RR fare. I'm just so tired of self-inserts and progression narratives and isekai, and finding this was a breath of fresh air.
claws8367Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
So, this is not you typical RR fiction.
You looking for adventure? This aint it.
The story starts off kinda slow. There is no urgency in the first couple of pov switches. Just some philospohy, which i am not even sure i spelled right, but we get to know our mc's a bit. Their goals, their drives.
The story progresses, urgency builds up so that's good. There are finnaly some hooks. By this time some theme's come to light, they are well written and not 2 subtle.
Thing is at the hight of the hooks i feel like there is no hope, it's all a bit to doom and gloom. Not mooping or anything, but i realize that story might not be for me. I am sure in a couple of chapters there will be hope and action.
But at its core this is a dystopian drama. Not something i come here on RR to read or anywhere to be fair.
So i quit reading. That said the story so far is good and would get even more exciting in a couple of chapters from where i stopped.
This is not 40k, this is not cyberpunk (though some themes do allign) and if i were to link it to any more known franchise i would link it to Blade Runner. And still not quite hit the nail.