This leaves a lot to be desired.

Although it starts well you wonder why the world is in such a muddle when all the families appear to be so perfect.

Even the crew of the spaceship appear to be one happy family.

With everything so wonderful what can go wrong?

Space exploration, planet colonization, space pirates, aliens. This science fiction story has a little of everything. However, it was also a bit of a mixed bag for me as well.

Thoughts:
In Converging Paths of Cerzia, Earth has expended all her resources and is in dire need of help. People are forced to wear masks when they go outside, animals no longer can survive. But an unknown world has been discovered – one much larger than Earth, with 18 moons, and is ‘teeming with life.’ As a result of this finding, a mission is approved where a ship will go to colonize the new planet, gather the resources they can and bring them back to Earth to help correct what is wrong. Captain Alec is to head up this mission, but doing so means going on a mission that will take him away from his family and his crew’s family for years. As the story progresses in the first several chapters we meet other colonists who will play a role in setting up the colony or gathering resources, mainly two sisters: Raje and Majelle.

Part of me doesn’t know quite what to make of this story. Even though it isn’t set up this way, it almost feels as if it is broken up into Part I and Part II. To me, Part 1 includes the introduction of the mission, but really follows the families as they get ready for the day the ship takes off. The relationships between everyone is what feels like the main plot of this section, other than a small moment where there might be a minor sabotage or something underhanded going on. To be honest, I struggled through this section. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the type of science fiction I tend to enjoy. I found the sister’s relationship a bit odd at times and contained too much focus on the families and their interactions.

However, Part II completely makes up for it. Around 40% of the way in the ship finally takes off and begins heading toward its destination. Not only do we begin the adventure the book has been leading us toward, we also begin to get more involvement from an alien race that causes quite a few questions to those on board as well as interactions from space pirates. But the ride to the destination doesn’t take too long and before you know it the ship is in orbit around the planet they were seeking. But due to the gravity of the planet, there is a lot of adjustment that is needed. Some respond and adjust to it quicker than others, including Raje who begins to explore and identify who the predators are and who they aren’t.

The discussions and descriptions of gravity can be seen throughout the book and are rather interesting in how significant they are within the context of the narrative. For example, the two sisters are actually raised on two different planets (Venus, Mars) with the planet having an impact on the way their body currently looks and is shaped. However, gravity also has a very significant role when the crew reaches the new planet. At first there is a skeleton crew sent just to get a read-out of the planet, but once they land we see how just a minimal amount of effort to step outside the shuttle exhausts them.

Overall, while I enjoyed the story I believe the second part of the book was much stronger than the first part. Now that I’ve finished reading, I am curious to see how this new world that they are on takes shape and what Raje will discover next and what role the aliens have to play.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dog Ear Publishing for the readers copy and opportunity to provide an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. This is written as though more for a young adult audience. Way too much family cutsyness. The story is a good one but the author spends too much time describing situations that actually giving the reader actions to enjoy reading about.

A resource exhausted and polluted earth has found a new home to relieve the pressure on its resources, particularly air which is unbreathable without breathing filters. These environmental crises bring investors and government together to build and populate a colony ship for a trip to populate and mine a newly discovered habitable planet in another solar system, one with an abundance of available resources that can be exploited and sent back to earth. Unknown to all involved parties, the effort is being watched by an alien species who have gone through similar trials but who don’t consider earthlings ready for what they are about to encounter. These watching aliens do not intend to intervene despite their reservations as to the earthlings’ readiness for what they’re about to encounter.

After a year of travel, the colonists find a heavy gravity world with unexplainable surprises that they are not ready to acknowledge. The book ended with an enormous revelation that needs further development.

The character developing interplay kept me reading; but toward the end, the book focused on only one character, an attractive self-trained and self-confident survivalist who made a major discovery that proved inconvenient for the colonist to accept.

Although reading this book was quite enjoyable on its own, a second book taking the story further would be welcomed.