The Following review was contributed by: John Walsh

Jamie MacGivens has only a few minutes between finding her boyfriend in bed with her best friend before she is abducted by aliens and flown to another planet. In company with other earthlings, she is imprisoned and marked out for slavery – for the men, forced labour, for the women, becoming brood mares for the nefarious Berloffs.

The planet on which Jamie and the others land is dominated by the Berloffs but there are others there too. The Elosians are native to the world and have also been dominated by the Berloffs; other races have been brought to the planet too and are languishing in the prisons. By virtue of her beauty, Jamie becomes the prize possession of the head Berloff, the insidious Locom. By agreeing to sleep with him, Jamie obtains the opportunity to free the slaves and she goes on the run with the handsome young tyrant Keenu and his discredited grandfather Dolan, who is also known as The One.

This is essentially a novel about trust. The author’s notes on the cover and the dedication suggest that she too has been required to undergo some testing times and this matches Jamie’s progress. Can she trust Keenu and Dolan? What motives do the two of them have for trying to look after her? These issues are examined with numerous emotions appearing and disappearing as the little band makes its way across a hazardous landscape. Ultimately, Jamie is required to decide the course of her own life, whether on the planet of her abduction or back home on earth.

This is a book that would have benefited from the attentions of a good editor. The problems are of two types. Firstly, there are various logical inconsistencies. For example, a large number of slaves of many different races are freed and yet we never meet any of them and they just seem to disappear. The Elosian people themselves seem happy to exist as part of a perhaps benevolent dictatorship in which the leader has no advisors or, as the phrase has it, checks and balances. This is unfortunate and the Elosians seem to exist without books, television or radio. Despite having access to spacecraft of advanced design, they seem to lack cars, bicycles and telephones. Secondly, there is some overuse of adverbs and – it is no surprise that one of the most common exercises prospective writers are asked to complete is to write a passage without any adjectives or adverbs and are then allowed to add exactly one. Additionally, characters rarely ‘say’ anything, they contest, snort, explode and go through many other contortions. Some words are also used incorrectly.

There is a germ of a nice idea in this book and a sequel is advertised. It is to be hoped that the author is encouraged to work on and improve her writing and it will be interesting to see how her career develops.