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Reviewed by Saifunnissa Hassam for Readers' Favorite
A.K. DuBoff's Stranded: Starship of the Ancients Book 1 is a riveting space opera set in deep space on Aethos. The new planet's atmosphere, green rolling hills, open fields, and rich, thriving ecosystems are expected to provide a habitable environment for humans. The first group of colonists is in orbit in their spaceship when an emergency evacuation order forces them to escape in individual space pods. The escape pods crash-land on the planet's surface, and the colony spaceship explodes in orbit. Evan Taylor is among the forty or so survivors. He is a spacefarer with training and experience as an interplanetary defense and security investigator. He assumes a leadership role, organizing the survivors to establish a preliminary campsite and salvage whatever they can from supply pods and the escape pods, including medkits, meal kits, tents, and bedrolls. Evan's intuition and investigative experience point to a terrifying possibility that the destruction of the spaceship was not accidental.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading A.K. DuBoff's Stranded for its complex characters, intriguing and gripping storyline, and detailed world-building of the planet Aethos. I liked the interweaving of nature and characters caught up in an extreme survival situation. I particularly liked the character development of Evan Taylor, set against the basic survival challenges he and the other survivors face on an unknown planet. The vivid narrative, the well-crafted dialogues, and the perilous challenges reveal his leadership abilities, keeping everyone safe under extreme circumstances with very limited resources. The story gained great depth through the character of Anya Rohas, a xenobiologist who is one of the survivors. Her courage, resilience, and adaptability quickly come to the forefront as she helps the shipwrecked colonists to survive. I was thoroughly immersed in this multifaceted survival story as it spirals into an expanding web of mysterious and intriguing discoveries. The suspense and action intensify. The ending is a fantastic cliffhanger. Stranded is a terrific read, with complex characters, a gripping plot of survival, highly imaginative world-building; an action-packed page-turner.
