The crew of the Copernicus are sent to investigate Bestla, one of the remote moons of Saturn. Bestla has always been an oddball, orbiting Saturn in the wrong direction and at a distance of thirty million kilometers, so far away Saturn appears smaller than Earth’s moon in the night sky. Bestla hides a secret. When mapped by an unmanned probe, Bestla awoke and began transmitting a message, only … it’s a message no one wants to hear: “I want to live and die for you, Satan.”
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My Sweet Satan by Peter Cawdron
A review
My Sweet Satan, by Peter Cawdron, is a science fiction novel with a whodunit twist. The story begins with a young girl sitting on a porch. Jasmine is nineteen and busy calibrating the meaning of texts between her and Mike, her boyfriend. Did she say something wrong? What does his sending a smiley face mean?
Thank God I grew up before smart phones.
As she contemplates her future, Jasmine breathes in the summer air. She’s going to miss her home. Soon, she and Mike will both go away to college. A brilliant student, Jasmine dreams that some day, she’ll be an astronaut. Mike has the same dream. Inside, her mother makes dinner as her dad and brother set the table.
“Stay with me Jazz!” Something jolts Jasmine away from the porch, shocking her back from edge of death into another reality. Jasmine discovers that she’s part of a crew of six, on Copernicus a spaceship whose mission it is investigate Bestla, a small moon orbiting Saturn. As Jasmine struggles to connect with her surroundings, the last twenty years are a blank. She barely recognizes “her” Mike in the older man who revives her. Mike shows few traces of her hometown boyfriend. “Jazz,” the thin woman she sees in the mirror, is a stranger.
Jason, the ship’s AI, senses Jazz’s disorientation. With Jason whispering instructions in her ear, she decides to keep her memory loss to herself. Jason sympathizes with her plight, sharing with her his dream of being human. After her vomiting ceases (remind me never to book a room on the Space Station), she explores her surroundings. Cawdron takes great pains in describing the ship as well what it would be like to navigate a place with little to no gravity. He succeeds in putting the reader with Jazz as she makes her way around the ship.
Cawdron renders his few characters in broad strokes, including Jasmine. Though some of the prose is lovely, you don’t know them as people, but more as a type. Still, this approach serves a purpose. You’re more invested in the action than in any character’s fate.
There’s a major disagreement between crew members. An unmanned probe had detected the message coming from Bestla. The message is: “My sweet Satan”. Suspicious that the government might have sent them on a suicide mission, Mike wants to turn around. The others think it might be a miscommunication and are determined to investigate. Personally, thanks to those long ago catechism lessons, I’d be with Mike. Then, quicker than Ten Little Indians, accidents and deaths start to happen. As she fights for her life, ultimately, it is Jazz who must confront the mystery of Bestla.
In his notes, Cawdron asks that any reviews not reveal the end of the book—meaning through the last page. I agree that knowing the end would be a disservice to quite a good story. There’s more to a mystery then simply discovering whodunit; there’s the resolution where we learn why, just for the Hal of it.
My Sweet Satan by Peter Cawdron is another great book by this talented author. I have not been disappointed yet. This book has the crew on a long space voyage waking up and finding things a bit different than planned. One of the crew, Jazz, was wakened improperly, and almost died. As a result, she has no memories of the last 20 years they were in deep sleep. As things progress, there is turmoil on board, all the while they are aiming for the moon that is sending out a bizarre message. As the story goes on, the action gets faster, more intense, and stranger. When the ending finally arrives, it is a mind bending. None of this author’s books are similar. All are unique and unusual. All are mind blowing! This is no different.