Particle Horizon by Selso Xisto

I’ve been dying to read a good sci-fi and found it here in this well crafted debut novel.  It’s everything you’d want in a traditional sci-fi.  It’s big.  It’s full of futuristic technology.  There’s a war that may destroy life as we know it.  There are super intelligent aliens that may destroy life as we know it.  Our own idiocy may destroy life as we know it.  Ready the anti-matter converters and hold tight to your Kindle.  This is a book I really enjoyed, and I know you will too.

In what I can only imagine is the far distant future, mankind’s technological advancements have reached breathtaking proportions.  We’ve carved lush worlds out of desolate asteroids and unsuitable-for-life planets.  We’ve genetically modified our physical bodies to resist virus and bacteria, and merged them with implanted technology to enhance senses and physical skills.  Our artificial intelligence has crossed into sentience.  But has mankind gone too far too fast?  In Particle Horizon, our species teeters at the knife’s edge of greatness or annihilation.  Well funded fundamentalists are determined to wipe the human race of technology, and are successfully using the advanced weaponry they despise to do it.  But the fundamentalists are not the only threat.   One man has discovered the logic code behind the very fabric of the universe.   That discovery, his actions, may bring about the end faster than the escalating war.

Particle Horizon follows the rules and themes of the sci-fi genre, (no jarring thematic jumps in this one).  It’s the writing style that really sets this book apart though.  The descriptions of life in this future and the science that made these worlds livable are vivid and alive.  So many sci-fi novels are dry and academic in their world-building, not this one.  The Angelhaven asteroid comes to life in an artist’s vision of color, texture, and sound.  Teenagers fly through light tubes and play in the varying gravity fields.  Longwheat fields rustle thick, hot, and suffocating in their beauty.  I found myself in reverent awe imagining the beauty as well as the destruction.  The author has clearly taken time to consider every detail of the science and life in these worlds, and it shows.  All the new and unfamiliar technologies were absolutely believable.

Even the seemingly been-there, done-that plot is creative and new.  I wasn’t sure which destructive force would be most likely to kill us off first, or if we’d even survive the book at all.  I wasn’t even convinced that the survival of mankind would be the best outcome; Armageddon at one point seemed the preferable solution.  The plot flowed fast, action packed, sometimes brutal and sometimes poignant.  I had a hard time putting it down.

Vivid well-written prose.  Interesting and believable technology.  A fast paced riveting story.  Five stars.