An Indie Review - Lost Souls - Ryan Skeffington

 I picked up Lost Souls for two reasons. I like Halo, and Ryan Skeffington seems like a very nice man. This isn't a book that was on my radar until Ryan reached out to me and offered to send me a copy. I said no because I'm awkward and had never had someone try to give me a book before, but it planted a seed of intrigue and I bought a copy last week. Now for the book.

- "I am the messiah of this world, and your reign ends here." -

The setting for Lost Souls, I'm sure Ryan won't mind me saying is very heavily influenced by the Halo video games. It's set on a ring in space, there are gravity weapons, Cortana style sentient holograms, ranked matches, spartan (titan) armour, plenty of great stuff for a cool Sci Fi book.

That is where the Halo comparisons end and the story comes into its own. The book follows a few different characters but Maximus, Ratchet and Kana are the main three, with Maximus being the ultimate protagonist. The story is essentially your classic evil suspicious overlords vs plucky rebellion who want change all underpinned with some very current comparisons to the current issues we face with the balance of power and wealth in our own societal structure, I found myself relating to all three of the main cast at different stages which helped me to stay immersed in the world Ryan had created. He also plays on the theme of power corrupting really well and delivers an excellent twist that I didn't see coming until a few pages out.

I'd be remiss not to mention a couple of things that weren't quite to my taste with the book, the main one being that I just don't think the book was long enough. Ryan tells a brilliant story in the 240ish pages he gives us, but he tries to do so much in those 240 pages that the story does feel quite jumpy at times and situations don't get the chance to come around organically. I noticed this most in thr character arc for Maximus. Without wanting to give anything away, Maximus goes through some quite significant shifts in his personality and these shifts did feel quite abrupt, it would have been nice to have a slightly longer read with a bit more of a natural build to some of those changes. For me, if this book is longer its an easy four stars for me.

As I said, Ryan tells a brilliant story here and while the writing can feel a bit jumpy at times, he also demonstrates flashes of brilliance in his writing. The loss of life in books is often done in a spectacular way, and the effects of grief are brushed past as the author needs a strong hero, but Ryan completely subverts that approach in his book, and in doing so spoke to some of my inner most fears around the fragility of life. I'm not ashamed to say I cried reading parts of this book, it was done beautifully.

Overall I found Lost Souls to be an overall good Sci Fi novel with some flaws and some brilliance mixed into it and would give it a solid 3.5/5 stars. Ryan definitely grew as a writer during his time writing this and you can feel that as you read the book. I'm excited to see where he takes his series next and without meaning to place any interstellar puns in this, the sky is the limit for Ryan Skeffington, I think he has bags of potential.