Gwen’s review of Netherwood by Michele Lang
Sci-Fi Romance released by Shomi on 26 Feb 08

This is going to be a short review. I didn’t like the book and Alicia did an admirable job summarizing the plot in her earlier review (which you can read here).

This author’s site is dismal, by the way. Tells you nothing about the book other than the title and a link to buy it. No blurb. No helpful author notes on the world-building, nada. [finger shaking time] Bad author, shame shame.

I like to think I’m smart and I still had trouble following the plot and all the mechanics behind the world that Lang has built for us here. For example, I never fully grasped the concept of “the grid.” I mean – I know what it’s supposed to be, but I never did quite believe in it.

And that one statement sums up how I felt about the book: it failed to suspend my disbelief to the point I just enjoyed the story. Much of the problem for me is the first person POV the story is told in. It’s just far too limited a POV for a world as complex as the one Lang has built here. For example, we’re never told exactly what a sheriff’s powers are – I mean, the character already knows this, right, so why would they need to repeat it (maybe because the reader doesn’t live in this world perhaps?) – so I was left scratching my head at the heroine’s hostility to her uncle when more sabotage is found. There are several other places in the book that are like that – totally confusing and never really resolved.

So, I can’t really recommend this book except to die-hard Sci-Fi romance fans, or fans of Lang’s writing.

Grade: C

Read Alicia’s review here. She liked it a LOT more than I did.

From the back cover:

THERE’S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN…

And her name is Talia Fortune. Her mission: capture the cyber outlaw, Kovner, a man who knows she is more than just a sheriff-Talia is also a woman, with a woman’s desires. Scion of the Fortune family and primary shareholder of the mega-conglomerate FortuneCorp, she is the Hand of Fate…or at least of the Home Office. With the power to punish, she’s been sent to Fresh Havens-a corporate off-world colony run by her uncle.

But the colony is full of hidden danger. Sabotage, deception, destruction…it will take every ounce of Talia’s strength and courage, fighting skills honed in the Amphitheatre and knowledge learned at the Academy, just to survive. Her ability to love and trust will be sorely tested, especially in the clutches of her quarry, the Outlaw of Fresh Havens, her cyber-lover and now her enemy. He and the answers lie in the Gray Forest, in a reality beyond the bubbledome, the Grid, and everything she’s ever known. Her future lies in… NETHERWOOD

Read an excerpt.