Title Krillion Author Joseph Bunkoczy Cover Art --- Publisher 2018 First Printing 2018
	Title Aqua Sum Author Joseph Bunkoczy Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Category Science Fiction Warnings None Main Characters Finn, Shelly, Binky, Thorson Main Elements Future humans Website ---

Krillion

I'm reading science fiction this year and while I was at the library I was checking out some variety, such French authors, when I stumbled across this one that was Canadian on top of it. However it was...well, you can tell it was independently published. Not that all indie books are bad, but with some of them you can just tell. Firstly, the characters seem flat somehow. Finn lives in an underwater city which is being evacuated and he escapes, finds a village on a beach and falls into bed with the first girl he finds. He doens't appear to feel any remorse or sadness about his girlfriend that was captured and shipped off to who knows where. He's just like aww, I can't go home, but hey, this village is kinda nice, maybe I'll explore the island while I'm here.

Now people started moving under water because there wasn't enough land for people to live on...but there's this island where all the people being kicked out of the underwater cities are being dumped on. So...there was land available, and food, and everything (the bad guys weren't so bad that they just killed them, nope, just kept them on an island well fed and apparently well provisioned in stuff like flashlights and rope so they can later escape).

The inhabitants of the underwater cities are Aquas, humans who have evolved to be amphibian. Which was an intriguing idea but half the time underused and poorly explained. Finn can clearly hold his breath a long time, he also seems to need to wear damp clothing, but at the same time he doesn't actually live in the water, he lives in a domed city under the water? I felt they abilities of the Aquas varied based on whatever the plot required.

And then there was Binky...the sex kitten secretary of the evil guy doing all the evictions, who ends up falling in love with the police chief who was enforcing all the evictions (till his concience caught up with him), and then she spearheads a revolt to get the city back.

I'll give credit that the story doesn't end the way you think it would, but otherwise there wasn't much depth, I didn't care about any of the characters, I didn't understand the world and how it worked, I didn't get how the Aquas were different from humans or really feel that they were different (just people with webbed fingers, which is a thing that's common enough with regular humans in the present day), and since we didn't see any of the overcrowded cities, I didn't get the emotional punch that seeing those desperate people looking to take over the underwater cities so they'd have some room to live...if all the living space was already taken, where were people getting their food?

And yeah, the island...that was quite the island of coincidences...

And what was with all the English names? This book was written in Quebec no less, where they make a big deal about English taking over, but you have Shelly, Binky, Finn, Fish, Surf, Thorson...don't think anyone has a truly French name...oh yeah, Vizou. But that sounds like a silly nickname, but then hey, it's better than Binky!!!

I'm not sure I'll read the other book, the library has it so it's free, but I've got SOOO much other stuff to read.