Strike The Lilac Scent

Strike The Lilac Scent is interesting. The story is of Melody, a 19 year old student, who is abducted by a band of female space pirates (well, 3 to be exact). Together they assemble a treasure map. The process of finding the missing pieces leads them on a journey through time and space.

The author gives a very distinct voice to some of the characters and they have their own idiolect. Melody, the main character, uses the word “ohso” often, or even the phrase “ohso noso.” I think this is a way for the reader to understand who is speaking without using dialogue tags. Another character, Connie, will often say, “Golly” or “Gosh” when she starts speaking. I didn’t quite pick up the same key phrases for the other two main characters, so at times I was a little lost in the dialogue. 

The future this book depicts is an interesting one, one made of “plas”. Food is made of plas, clothes are made of plas, everything is plas (sorry, not chrome). I’m still not 100% sure I know what plas is, or what some of the other words in the book are: ales? (Aliens?). “Fems” is pretty easy, it's just females.

The plot is really unlike most I have seen. Well, I suppose going around on a quest isn’t new, but the whole abduction by pirates working for artificial intelligence certainly is. I did find the story a bit hard to follow at times. The characters travel not only through space, but through time. As they journey to the past, the high tech gear they bring transforms into era appropriate technology or attire. The literary style of the book sometimes makes it hard to track exactly what is happening.

Overall I think the story is cute and has charm. One line I enjoyed was “later that evening (there is no evening in space)....” The voice of the ship is also a pirate, which can be amusing at times. The “Loo” of the ship is also where all the food is prepared (yuck). My favorite line was, “They ate on plasplates, which would dissolve in the air after usage, leaving an unobservable wisp of chemicals whose carcinogenic factor had never been proven.” This is amusing and clever.

The narrative to me was a bit meandering, I don’t think I still really understand what happened in the opening scene of the book. There is also a bit of an adult sense of humor, which might not appeal to all audiences. Overall, I think the book shows a lot of promise and would appeal to an astute reader.

Perspective:  Third person Omni (although it primarily follows Melody).

Tense: Simple past

Length: 288 pages

Kindle Unlimited: No

https://www.amazon.com/Strike-Lilac-Scent-H-Turk/dp/B0DH5222PG