The Settlers by Jason Gurley
Book 1 of The Movement Trilogy
My Goodreads rating: 3 stars
The Earth is falling apart, suffering from massive natural disasters that are slowly eroding away at its surface, and at humanity. To ensure the survival of the human race, a series of space stations are built that orbit the planet, and people are slowly migrated up to them. The Settlers follows a handful of these settlers as they make the transition to their new home and society.
The Settlers is wonderfully imagined, with a variety of characters that are interesting, diverse, and three-dimensional. The characterization is excellent. I especially love the interaction between Tasneem and her mother. The depiction of them leaving Earth is absolutely exquisite. However, for several reasons, I was unable to give this book the full five stars.
I felt the first interaction between Tasneem and Blair was awkwardly done, and overall the entire scene feels incomplete. Especially when compared to the dialog between Tasneem and the doctor during her first visit, the dialog between Tasneem and Blair during their first meeting left a lot to be desired. Gurley is able to produce wonderful scenes with lots of detail and clearly a great deal of thought, so this particular scene stands out because it clearly lacks so much of what he does so well elsewhere.
Several other reviewers have brought up the issue of the lack of quotation marks. Some really good authors have used this style device, and to great effect. I respect Gurley’s choice to take chances with his style, and he does a fairly good job, but it’s not perfect. To have this technique work really well, it should always be clear who is speaking. Usually authors do this by giving eac
Quotation marks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
h character a distinct voice. It would also help if the characters didn’t start speaking in the middle of a paragraph, which Gurley does often. I think my biggest problem with Gurley using this technique is that he did nothing more than remove the marks. His dialog is written as if they were there, and that’s not really fair to the reader.
Gurley tends to use “says” quite a bit, which is a particular pet peeve of mine. There are a lot of really creative ways to tag who is speaking without using “says”. The overuse of it makes dialog feel really mechanical and
flat, not natural at all.
The book is written in present tense. Again, this is a choice of style. I don’t, however, think it worked well in The Settlers. Everything is in present tense, but the dialog is usually in past tense. To make matters worse, a little past perfect was thrown in and my head started to hurt. I think in and of itself, it wouldn’t have be too difficult to work with as a reader except there are the additional problems as noted above, and overall these choices detracted from my ability to enjoy the things that Gurley does very well.
I do, however, look forward to reading more of Gurley’s work. He is clearly a very talented writer with a vast imagination, and I’m excited to see what else he has for his readers.
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