Subcutis by Harper J. Cole #BookReview

For feminist entrepreneur Miriam Hunter, financing and leading humanity’s maiden voyage to the Centaurus Arm is to be the fulfillment of a dream. For two centuries, space exploration has been dominated by men, to the extent that female voices are seldom heard on the frontiers of galactic expansion. Hunter intends that the Bona Dea, crewed entirely by women, will make such discoveries and break such bounds that this will never be the case again.

Chief Technician Flora Cartwright joined the mission as much to move on from a failed marriage as to help realise her captain’s dream. Six years without men seemed the perfect balm for a wounded soul, until she met Charlie … a robot placed on board for light recreation who proved too good to be true.

Both women will have their resolve tested when the expedition makes a historic discovery – intelligent life has bloomed beyond the Earth. For the planet of Mahi Mata holds secrets and dangers beyond their wildest dreams.

Or their darkest nightmares.

Title: Subcutis | Author: Harper J. Cole| Publisher: Self | Pub. Date: 4 Feb 2018| Pages:: 254 | ASIN: B079LZTCTP| Genre: Science Fiction| Language: English| Starred Review: No | Source: Author/ Publisher

Subcutis Review

Science Fiction AND feminism, count me in?

Or so I hoped…

Miriam Hunter, feminist entrepreneur is putting a team together (solely women), to go out into space for 6 years and discover something totally and wholly unique, and if not unique then it’s not worth investigating. For all your womanly needs, on board there are some ACMs (sex robots) and chief technician Flora Cartwright falls for one of them, who she names Charlie. And they say romance is dead…

I’ve been in the deepest and darkest reading slump for over 6 years. I’m not really reading anything and I’m not even listening to audio-books, which really isn’t like me! I needed a book to bust my slump and unfortunately I think I may have sank into a further one with this. Why? This book is a slow burn, very very slow, and for me the flame just never caught properly alight; scenes take a long time to unfold and I didn’t find them incredibly exciting. It took me about 5 weeks to read it which probably didn’t help, it’s a shame. Hopefully book two, with the scene and some of the characters more set into stone, will be able to dive straight into some semblance of action and intrigue.

There are a number of characters in the novel to get your head around, each of them unique enough and with their own voice and reason for being aboard the ship. I didn’t feel myself bonding with any of them, although I did feel a little for AMC Charlie at times.

There are some scenes in this book that feature OCD, and I don’t know enough about it and haven’t researched it to be able to decide if it could be seen as problematic or not, but I did feel like I went ‘eek’ a little.

For a debut novel, Subcutis is written well, and Cole shows a lot of potential and imagination for what’s to come.

Unfortunately this book just didn’t do it for me, the cover is cool though!

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