This was a pretty light hearted scifi story with lots of tongue in cheek ideas. An a,Jen, space travel, AIs developing independence, ruthless bad guys etc. it was a hard finish for me.

Pretty good overall. I'm not a fan of cliffhanger endings but otherwise this has a pretty good set of characters, and a decent plot. There's some humor is can be tough to pull off and some decent tech.

Thanks very much for the free review copy for review!!

An interesting sci-fi, space drama. I especially liked the A. I's 'Ship' and 'Spider' whose personalities were funny, feisty and mischievous. All the A.I's had their own independent attitudes but also a collective 'One of Us' understanding, where they begrudgingly assisted humans, but at the same time looked after their own interests. However, I did not warm to any of the human characters accept perhaps Gurney, who wasn't the most pleasant of people, but he was quirky & had more compelling attributes in the end than the rest. The ruthless antics of 'The Company' had a direct correlation with the way a lot of companies behaved in real life throughout history, which was shocking, realistic and fit well within the story. The Anomaly was more of a silent, mysterious partner in this book, one which I wish had been more engaging in the storyline.

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CONTENT WARNINGS: there's a very brief and vague mention of forced pregnancy.

Oh boy.

I've finished this with the strange feeling that I kind of enjoyed it, but also that it wasn't very good.

The ships? Great, hilarious, especially Ship/Rambo (give it its bees). actually the AI driven things in general, Spider is honestly probably my favourite character and it only turns up for like the last third, if that, and gets far less dialogue than it deserves, especially when bantering with Brad.

The human characters? Hit or miss.

I think I enjoyed following Gurney the most. Even if he was probably the least interesting on paper, he was definitely the most consistent in internal monologue and had consistently good humour in his chapters. Same for Mac, one of the directors at The Company, who are the bad guy of the whole thing. He's got a very mean style of humour which doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's good fun to read.

But then Layla and Aled, who we spend the majority of the latter half of the book with.... I just didn't care for them at all.

As the main character Layla is supposed to be important to the rest of the characters in some way or other, and I like that this is mostly out of (bad) luck and circumstance (with her capability as captain/leader sort of improving as the book goes on), but she's just so...bland? On paper she should be interesting, and there's some great moments for her (her violent outbursts and that one bit with the head), but it doesn't come together in a compelling way.

Same for Aled. Part of this is probably personal bias in that I, as a person, dislike Aled, but there's ways to have unlikeable characters and still be interesting and enjoyable to follow. Aled is not that.

(the same sort of applies to layla: she's not a great person either, but is more enjoyable to follow.)

Also 'The Company'.... yeah it's not the most subtle of books.

At one point there's an entirely preachy 'capitalism bad' speech, and towards the end one of the characters does a plot summary of the preceding 250 or so pages.

These things can work, I'm down for any 'capitalism bad' content, it just needed a finer touch for it to work in my opinion.

The general tone fits the old, star trek-era sci-fi style quite well; Ships crashing into ships, judicious use of tech for purposes other than its intended one (namely the laser welder), flying through space in just your suit, these bits were fun!

Just, everything holding these disparate pieces together felt incredibly lacklustre to me.

The plot is a kind of comedy of errors, with our main characters setting off to 'deal with an alien', that going tits up, and then the rest of the plot (mostly) following on from there.

Ultimately it's kind of eh. I didn't care for the broad strokes much, and when the plot tries to be more detailed it takes away from the actual strength of the book which is the interplay between the characters, and doesn't really add anything interesting to those broad strokes.

As an example, very early in the book there's mysteries established around Layla (her 'sisters', her health, etc.), and Aled, and The Company, that I was sure they would be a through-line for the characters, or at least be important later.

Apparently no! Aled's is resolved within literally pages and he gains nothing to take its place, and Layla's is sorted within a couple of pages as well, but in a way that unnecessarily makes her seem like an idiot.

As another example, something happens to Layla at about the halfway mark which is incredibly serious and has been kind of building up for a while. But then what could have been an interesting character moment or choice gets resolved in literally the next chapter and becomes completely unimportant.

There was no sense of stakes, and any that were there I didn't really feel any sort of attachment towards.

In general, the economics bits of the plot, with Seymour and what The Company are working towards, are well done. The bits with Layla and co., not so much.

Also that ending. Ohhh boy.

When you, as a reader, are glancing at the page count in the last twenty or so pages as it ticks down and wondering how the hell this is all gonna resolve, that's not a good feeling, but can increase the tension. When you reach the last page and realise, oh, it didn't, the tension was for nothing, that's even worse.

Some stuff gets resolved, sure, but I finished with more questions than answers, and a general unsatisfied feeling that soured the better parts of the book.

As a more technical thing, I feel like the decision to have Layla's pov in first person but the rest of the book in third person would have been fine if we got her pov more often. She's on the cover - she's the *main character* - but the book tends to go long stretches without her, meaning when you check back in the switch from the third to first person is much more jarring than it really should be.

Don't get me wrong, I like getting perspectives from everyone else; it's one of the strong points of the book, having so many and adding to the humour and tension (and plot) in places because of the vastly different takes that various characters have on events. It just comes at the expense of having a consistently engaging main character in my opinion.

If you've got a spare afternoon and this is available to you and you fancy some sci-fi nonsense, give it a go. It's a light read, with some good humour in places and some fun banter between characters.

anything more than that? try elsewhere.

Anomaly by D J Harrison is another alien science fiction book! Not my favorite that I've read this year. Highly suggest The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown. This book was a bit too long for my liking.

4 stars, Fantastic

ANOMALY
by D.J. Harrison

This book is fantastic, I read it non-stop, falling asleep with it in my hand, and upon waking back up, further pursued it. The main thing I didn't care for, is that it's a cliffhanger, other than that, the story is impressive.

Highly recommend it to anyone into science fiction.

I received a complimentary copy of #anomaly from @netgalley #booksgosocial I was under no obligation to post a review. #sciencefiction #fantasy #reviewer #bibliophile

Quirky characters, greedy corporations, space ships, AIs, and more. A lighthearted read that captures the style of the classic space operas of the past. I found it took a bit to get into the story but then I was hooked. I especially enjoyed the ship’s character and found its fascination with bees quite amusing. Highly entertaining. Recommend.

This is a must read! Just make sure to set aside a weekend because once you start you won't be setting this one down!

This did what I was hoping for in a scifi novel and from the genre, the characters were so much fun in this universe. Everything worked in this scifi genre, I enjoyed the way D J Harrison writes as it was a great novel overall. It made me excited to read more from the author and hopefully more in this universe.

"The problem we have is a product of our success. We were set up to move valuable minerals from the asteroid belt into close Earth orbit, and we’ve done that very well. Now, however, we’ve supplied enough raw material to last for at least a hundred years. Our job is done. We’re not needed now. Therefore, we have to find something else we can do.’

Big thanks to the publisher for approving me for an eARC of this book, even though by the time I requested the book, the book had already been out for five days. Oops.

Also, a big thank you to my best friend who helped me find this book on Goodreads. The book just wasn’t on here and she somehow managed to Sherlock Holmes her way into finding it for me. Love that girl.

Anywho. This book was something else I swear. Sci-fi books are some of my favorites but this book was just great. Layla’s attitude (I seem to have a thing for snarky characters) was great. Ship (I would die for Ship) was so frickin funny with his bee obsession and just overall this was definitely a book I’d buy for myself.