NovaForge Book Reviews

NovaForge by Scott Toney Book Summary

Solaris. A planet like any other, rife with wars, science and love. But at the peak of its civilization, a great meteor fell, bringing long-dead souls to Solaris, souls that had been sustained by the life-force of one lone man, Ineal.
At the moment of impact, these souls scattered across Solaris, giving inhuman abilities to mortals while scarring their bodies and corrupting their lives.
Samuel was one such man, a man of faith who thought to use his powers to worship his God: he watched his followers, and his planet, die. Seas turned to lava and the skies darkened. And as Samuel’s heart grew weary and angry, he used his powers to manipulate the world to serve him alone.
Samuel became god of a planet whose only life was the symbiotic life so like his own.
Centuries later, he discovered others, threats that had not been on this planet before. A winged woman; a cyborg; a future-seer and a child. A great vengeance burned a comradery between them.
They were souls that could overthrow him. Souls that he would need to destroy.

An excerpt:
Darkness consumed Ineal as the voices tore at his thoughts. The sole survivor of the planet Eon, he wanted to shut off his brain, to destroy his consciousness and be nothing. But the voices would not let him.
The planets’ souls, he thought, encased in this meteor hurtling through space. The souls of dead planets destroyed us. I am the last. They take me for their own.
He did not know when the essences of dead planets first came to Eon. Men and women bonded with them, inviting the haunting gaseous essences to their bodies and allowing the essences to become necessary symbiotes of the flesh. The symbiosis with the dead planetary souls gave his people powers and abilities beyond their dreams. But the price, the price of the flesh was great, and an ultimate death of sacrifice and pain was given in return. Ineal was the last, and the only being of Eon who had not accepted them into his flesh.
But you took me, he thought as they spoke with their unintelligible voices, whispering in a constant echo through his mind. When my planet died you came to me. You took my body to keep yourselves alive. They kept him alive too, feeding him their energy as they fed off his living essence.
Millennia of time passed as the meteor orbited the solar system.
Ineal could take no more. Rock pressed against him, suffocating his thoughts.
He closed his mind, pulling blackness from the void beyond and urging it to destroy him and the planetary souls, so that whatever planet they would go to next might be spared.
His mind’s darkness came. He forgot speech. He forgot sight. He forgot love. But the essences would not release his life force and the greatness it became in their harnessing embrace. They would not allow him to forget primal sense.
Then, in that rawness of life, where he was barely being at all, he sensed a planet. They had intended this new planet as their destination from the start.
The essences’ telekinetic connection pulled away from him, severing the symbiosis and sending searing heat through his form.
There was a moment of silence for Ineal, of freedom. Then came the violent crack of stone, as meteor met planet. A great boom consumed him. Ineal’s consciousness was lost… almost. But his essence lingered somehow in the planet’s form.
The planetary essences fled their transport, consuming life and searching for prey.

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