Wednesday 7 April 2021

I Lost My Compass at the Bermuda Triangle and Dream Five by Clara L. Molina #BlogTour

 

sci-fi fiction

"Sophia was a bubble moving in a wave, an ant making its voice heard. Success possibly meant her death. What was at stake? Everything".

In my early 20s I read a lot of sci-fi fiction, mostly the classics, like Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, the Strugatsky brothers, Le Guin and others. And while I occasionally dip my toe in the genre, it's not one that I choose regularly now. When an opportunity has arisen to get acquianted with a new (for me) sci-fi author, I jumped at the chance. 

I Lost My Compass at The Bermuda Triangle and Dream Five by Clara L.Molina has an intriguing title and tells an unusual story.

We meet an unnamed woman who wakes up in an empty office, drenched in water and debris. (We later learn that she is Sophia Lorenzo, aka Mina van Helsing). She has no recollection of who she is, or how she happened to be in that deserted office. She is on her own, with only a little dog Paco for company. "Things were frozen in time as if everyone had been working. Then in the midst of it all, had been removed". When she looks at herself in the mirror, the face is a mystery to her. "She had landed in some place and some time. The wind hummed in this futuristic city, but it had been abandoned long ago, as dust covered much of the roads, and the landscape was in a tangled mess".

A paper falls from the sky, with a simple message - she has a mission to fulfil - to kill a man named Murich Rhys. Rhys is a manipulative dictator ruling over the city called Absolute Zero. He subjugates his citizens with the use of the drug Dream Five which turns people into sleeping zombies. A few rebels who managed to escape want to end his dictatorship. 

Murich Rhys "was responsible for the suffering of the entire world and had a drug called Dream Five that controlled people like robots".The problem is once you enter the city, you are drugged with Dream Five and forget everything.

Sophia embarks on a long, challenging journey to find Rhys and save the city. She doesn't want to kill someone she doesn't know and whose evil intentions she hardly understands. She has to travel through the forest, the desert, mountains and river, meet friendly and hostile strangers who have their own agenda. 

Will Sophia be able to reach Absolute Zero? Will she discover the truth about her mission and herself, and find her compass at the Bermuda Triangle and Dream Five?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found the narrative rather confusing at first. The plotlines seem to be disconnected and jumping from place to place, person to person, and appear as bereft of reason. The worlds change from the hi-tech to the primitive society, and back to the futuristic advanced level. At times it reads as a stream of consciousness, which might be clear to the characters but not to the reader.

The bewildering puzzling pieces will come together at the end. 

I Lost My Compass is a thought-provoking mix of sci-fi with dystopian elements, which shows plentiful possibilities of a futuristic imaginative tale.


Purchase Links: 

UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08PXH3VJS/ 


US https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08PXH3VJS/

 

Author Bio – Clara L Molina writes Science Fiction books most of the time, dabbles in comic drawings occasionally, and writes to laugh at herself all the time. She has a computer science degree, but has been a lifelong writer. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, and enjoys fresh air and days where her hair is not frizzy. 


Social Media Links – 

https://twitter.com/BoxaEl 

https://www.elboxa.com/ 

This post is part of the blog tour.

My thanks to Clara L. Molina and Rachel's Random Resources for my digital copy of the book!

sci-fi books


2 comments:

  1. Going from one era to another makes the book a bit harder to follow the plot. I'm not a fan of this approach, but it depends on how the book is written though. It seems you've enjoyed it, which is great.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, this one wins the prize for most inventive title ! I'm not a big sci fi fan but your review has me intrigued.

    ReplyDelete