Robert F. Glahe’s ESCAPE FROM DESOLATION, Book One: Inclusion is the first book of a trilogy. It benefits from the minor novelty of featuring a lone human integrating into an alien society on a distant planet, rather than the usual “alien invades planet Earth” trope. Captain Yoni Arduus is in charge of the scientific exploration ship Populus when it explodes, and he makes his escape in a small craft with a few of his crew. After the escape pod flies off-course and crashes into an uncharted planet, their initial contact with an alien race results in the death of his team. Arduus survives, though blinded, and is gradually nursed back to health by his somewhat reluctant hosts. As the captain makes his way in an alien society, his main aim is to return to the people he left on Earth. The more he learns about the aliens, the more he realizes things are not as they seem on the surface. Though the residents view the planet DeSolus as a utopia, Arduus is disturbed by their autocratic leader and the evidently critical state of their natural resources. There are secrets being kept from the population. Now, Arduus must decide if he should help save the planet or abandon his new friends and head back home.
A very bright opening chapter covering the explosion of the Populus, poetically described as “a silver needle in the night,” ends with the captain pondering the value of their ultimately temporary escape: “Does the success of survival fill the hollowness in the heart borne by the memory of the dead?”
As the book progresses, Arduus takes an ever more philosophical approach to his predicament. These aliens, their skin “a mottled mix of pale aqua and purple tones,” are like nothing he has ever encountered, but there are enough similarities with Arduus’s home planet, and, of course, with that of the readers of the book, for the story to be read as analogous to elements of the present day. Much as planet Earth is in the throes of a climate crisis, DeSolus is suffering from the depletion of natural resources and a desperate struggle to reinstate their forests. And what do the captain’s struggles with acceptance and integration say about the nature of borders and co-operation?
Glahe’s world-building is solid and well thought-out. His descriptions of both alien technology and the planet’s flora and fauna are handled well, notably the dying forests where “stumps stood as regal telephone poles marred by straggly and lichen-encrusted branches.” A believable and immersive world is slowly revealed. “Slowly” though, is the operative word. After the initial excitement of exploding spaceships and crash landings, the pace lessens, and it takes quite some time for the plot to find its feet. By the midway point, with Arduus becoming more confident in his new home, things begin to pick up, and a surprise twist sets things up nicely for the second volume.
Robert F. Glahe’s ESCAPE FROM DESOLATION, Book One: Inclusion is a solid opening volume in a new space trilogy. It’s always engaging, and, by the book’s conclusion, readers will be eager to find out where the story is going next.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader
