THE MORTAL GOD by E.F. Skarda is filled with politically apropos truisms such as: when a population is kept focused upon ongoing war, they are generally too distracted to pay close attention to things like not being able to pay ever-rising taxes which cause many of them to lose their land. And this strategy is all well and good, until it backfires due to something or someone actually being powerful enough to threaten the rulers’ throne. Young Commander Kyle Griffin comes from an influentially royal bloodline, descending from a perpetually ill father and an esteemed, omnipotent grandfather, the Lord Gentry, Aeron. Said to be the all-mighty hero who managed to rescue the human race from extinction 2,500 years ago when a comet out in space collided with the planet Mercury, throwing Earth’s orbit into chaos and freezing humanity’s first home into everlasting ice, Aeron gathered together the scattered race then barely surviving on dozens of worlds after the destruction of Earth, and brought them together under the shelter of the Gentry’s beneficent wing.
Aeron was “the only sentient alien the human race had ever encountered. After some sixty-two hundred years of wandering the Milky Way, he just appeared.” Kyle had always wondered how such an unlikely event occurred, but pulpit sermons reiterating the tale never offered further explanation, and really as soon as Kyle’s own special abilities were discerned, he’d been kept too busy to think about much other than leading the Dominion Army’s cream-of-the-crop Infinity Force to victory after victory against a ragtag resistance band known as Splinter. Born a mutant with cosmic Celestial Spark skills, while Kyle might not be as powerful as the Gentry who can topple mountains by mere thought, there are lots of things that he can do that none of his friends, and in fact no one else he’s ever met, are able to do. So Kyle does what’s expected of him and becomes a loyal soldier…until the day everything changes.
Lacking typical elements like an author bio, as well as perhaps being a bit too violent for some readers, THE MORTAL GOD is rich with an intriguing plot, along with captivating character juxtapositions such as a slow-simmering, oft-thwarted attraction with Angel, mentor Dr. Preston’s daughter, a hot-burning rivalry with the formidable Vaughn Donovan, and some potent family mystery to boot.
E.F. Skarda’s THE MORTAL GOD is smoking science fiction at its best, and only volume one of the Infinity Chronicles, which seems likely to become a stimulating series.
~C.S. Holmes for IndieReader