The Antorus Saga: Prequel

This very short (26 page) story is about Atkins Jacob, creator of self-aware androids, who, soon after their genesis, decided the best way to world peace was to wage a decisive war with humans and force them into a peaceful coexistence. The book starts during the war, with Jacob trying to find a weakness that can be exploited in mankind’s favor. Soon Jacob and Captain Ellison are on a mission to find a secret stash of hidden hackers that might help tip the war in mankind’s favor. Other characters and back history of the world before the current 2280s are introduced along the way, and usually in just a sentence or two.

The Antorus Saga suffers from multiple problems, not the least of which is its brevity. Though considering the problems, maybe the conciseness is a blessing to reduce the time the reader has to spend wading through them. There are so many grammar and editing issues, it’s easier to look for sentences without errors than ones with them. Tenses change mid-sentence, periods seem more like commas than sentence endings and normal spacing between sentences is almost nonexistent. The dialog could fit into an Ed Wood movie, and might even come off as stilted there. While the author may have had a passion to write this story, the execution runs far below what one might expect from a first draft in a beginning writing class.