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mcgrew writes:

Title: Black Bead
Author: J.D. Lakey
164 pages
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Available in hardcover, paperback, and ePub

I met the book's author and her illustrator at this year's Worldcon [The World Science Fiction Convention -Ed.]. They were raffling off a hardcover copy of Black Bead, so I left my email on the list. A few weeks later the illustrator, Dylan Drake, emailed me, saying I didn't win the hardcover but he attached an ePub version. We've exchanged a few emails.

It's the first book in a series, but like Frank Herbert's Dune or Isaac Asimov's Foundation, it stands by itself. It's the only book in the series I've read so far, as I still have a couple of other books laying around unread.

I liked this book. Some call it "young adult" fiction, probably because someone with an eighth grade education could easily read it, and partly because the main characters are children. But I'm far from young; I'm eligible for Medicare next year, and I enjoyed it. It was what I look for in a book—a fun read.

Dylan said some people saw it as fantasy even though it's intended to be science fiction, probably because the main character has psionic powers. I won't spoil it, but in a later book she has yet to publish, the psi is explained scientifically.

It seems that some SF is fantasy in disguise. Maybe all SF is; I'm at the beginning of Stephen King's 11/22/63, and it's the only time-travel story I've read that has absolutely no science; at least, that I've run across so far (it's a very fat book). Dylan's is science fiction that only feels like fantasy. The writing style reminds me vaguely of Tolkien, and perhaps that's why.

It's a primitive setting in an alien, dangerous world with some very imaginative and often scary flora and fauna, including fruit that causes inebriation, obviously becoming wine on the vine.

Again, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'll be reading more of these books.

Original Submission