“BRILLIANTLY CONCEIVED! CREEPY & COMPELLING!” – Amazon ReaderAn eerie tale of first contact and perilous adventure. John E. Boyd, hyper-curious and depressed human being, dares to pursue the lost tribe of missing emigrants from city-Earth. Guanjo defies his expectations, turning his mission into genocide.
In Joel Dennstedt’s captivating sci-fi novel, John Boyd, longing for a journey of discovery like his hero Meriwether Lewis, dreams of going to Guanjo, a planet many light-shifts distant, and escaping the sterile city-state Earth. Making the dream a reality is not an easy task. Those who immigrated to the planet some time past have not sent a message back to Earth, nor have any members of the expedition returned. Was the landing successful? Did their craft survive the journey? Were they captured or killed by the natives? He recalls the journey of Captain Cook to the Hawaiian Islands, successful at first, but ultimately resulting in his death.
Nevertheless, he undertakes his journey. Like Meriwether Lewis before him, he is plagued by chronic depression and a search for a new world might be just the ticket. But it proves to be doubly dangerous because the light-shifts of space travel over great distances involve the breakdown and reconstituting of atomic structures which could annihilate the space traveler. Then, too, assuming he lands safely on the planet, what perils might he then encounter? What accident or horror has rendered the original travelers unable to communicate with Earth?
But he is successful on both counts. He arrives at the planet safely and finds the inhabitants in good health. Moreover, the planet itself is lush with vegetation much like a South American rain forest which Dennstedt with his knowledge of that region describes so convincingly that the reader is transported there as well.
But John Boyd, our hero, observes there is no bird song. No sound of insects. No visible animals large or small in the jungle. He discovers that beneath the seeming normality of the inhabitant’s lives there is something strange and deadly. Another life form exists on the planet and it is slowly draining the DNA from the inhabitants. It is symbiotic as well as parasitic. In the process of gradually sucking the life force from the colonists, it also inoculates the earthlings from a deadly virus.
How can he help them? How rescue one young girl he has come to love? How destroy the predators without abandoning the colonists to slow death from an infectious disease?
Rich in imagery and other worldly beauty, reminiscent of the best of nature writing as well as cutting edge sci-fi and adventure, it is a compelling read.
This gem written by author Joel Dennstedt is a humorous, touching, and imaginative tale written in first-person. The protagonist, John, is dissatisfied with his life and yearns to explore other worlds, just as the great explorers of centuries past ventured into new continents and yet to be discovered islands on planet Earth. John obtains financial backing to do just that when the reason for the disappearance of a group sent to explore the moon Guanjo has not been solved. Traveling to Guanjo is easier said than done. It involves many transfers of space travel that set him on distant worlds to await connecting galactic transportation. This becomes an odyssey of sorts that comprises the first one-third of this novel. Once he reaches Guanjo he becomes acquainted with the people and environment of Guanjo, a beautiful but strange rainforest planet where he eventually discovers some disturbing revelations beneath the surface. These revelations produce a life or death dilemma for John and the people of Guanjo.
Author Joel Dennstedt takes much care in the quality of the narrative. The result is compelling and intimate. The reader becomes so immersed as to not only picture, but feel, the unfolding adventure as if they were inside John as passengers on his ride. We get to know the many distinct supporting characters, and even come to love a few as John loves them.
I found myself ruminating over this novel long after I finished the final page. Guanjo is more than a Science Fiction novel; it is ultimately an ethical human question about the desire to save those we love from what is saving them but at the same time destroying them.
FIVE enthusiastic stars!