A book is like a financial mutual fund, to take a measure of its performance and quality you have to compare it against an index, and you have to compare it against the right index. To take a correct and fair measure of Lin Y. Cawthra's first book, the science fiction novel Primus Three, one has to decide what genre it fits into. The decision is not hard: the genre is pulp space opera, with a very strong emphasis on the "pulp".
A classic of literature or science fiction Primus Three is not. It carries no novel ideas as regards scientific or social change. It contains no obvious science blunders, but references to science and technology do not extend beyond basic gadgetry. The social issues would not be alien to 19th Century America. The plot reads like an American cowboy western novel, with an upper class big city girl unexpectedly hitting poverty and choosing to work at an isolated and lawless mining operation. Since the book is space opera rather than a western, the mining operation is on a distant planet.
Having classified Primus Three as pulp space opera, it would be unfair to measure it by the same standards as one might measure a potential Hugo Award winner. As a reader, all that one can surely require of a "pulp" novel is a level of entertainment, and this Primus Three provides. For a long air journey it is certainly more readable than an airline in-flight magazine.
In Primus Three, the heroine Felicity plunges from the Good Life to Disaster and at the same time several mysteries are presented (the tale of a lost love, and the fact that Felicity's co-workers are vanishing without explanation). Answers to these mysteries can be found by ... buying the book and reading it to the very end.
Of course, the author and the publisher of a "pulp" novel presumably hope for it to make plenty of money. Primus Three seems to be oriented in this direction. The book is stated as being the first in a series, and given its cowboy western feel one might imagine multiple successor volumes, with fan readers buying every one. The back cover contains a very clear warning as regards sex and violence. The book certainly contains plenty of both. However, given the clarity of the warning, the genre of the book, and the nature of the cover (the woman in the picture is wearing a lot less than the man), the suspicion is aroused that the warning is perhaps more to boost sales than to caution the potential purchaser.
Primus Three is pulp space opera, but this is as important a part of the body of science fiction as the works by the few grand masters. If Primus Three and its successors in the long run entertain many people - and they may well do this - then one cannot ask anything more of them. Let us hope that they can also make Lin Y. Cawthra plenty of money too.
Review by John Taylor of Taylor's Bookshelf
and for The Midwest Book Review
Lin Cawthra makes an impressive debut with this first installment of a Sci-Fi trilogy. Primus Three is a depressing, corrupt, off-planet mining colony where fist fights and sword duels occur on a regular basis. Here Felicity comes to accept a job as a day care worker, even though she has no previous experience with children. Primus Three is an action packed, high adventure, greatly entertaining science fiction story, that with its graphic violence and sexually explicit scenarios is highly recommended, but for adult readers only.
Review by sffworld.com
You somehow have to take this book for what it is, a first effort to become a writer, and what is better than writing books if that's what you want to do. I think this is something this book illustrates perfectly.
This is the story about Felicity, a young, kind of naive girl that suddenly finds herself faced with problems of the "real world". She has been raised by her grandmother and then when her seemingly very rich grandmother dies, Felicity discovers that she is left with almost nothing. All her grandmother's properties has to be sold to cover the debts. Felicity ends up getting a job as a day care worker at the Martinson Mining Company on a far and distant planet called Primus Three. Bit by bit Felicity discovers that the Martinson Mining Company has a bit more to it than it seemed at first.
In many ways the plot of the story is a well used one, you have a "non-hero", Felicity, that ends up in a situation where she needs to take more charge of things, and thus becomes more of a hero. I feel that this change in character is somehow being overdone by the author. From time to time you get this unsettling feeling that Felicity is really stupid, and it's a bit hard to believe that she doesn't see things coming at times. Then the next moment she fixes everything and suddenly is the smartest of all.
When it comes to the use of language I found it a bit hard to read in the beginning, but you can clearly see a tremendous improvement throughout the book. It seems like the flow of words comes more naturally as the story progresses, and this is something I think illustrates that this has been a learning experience for the author.
So what can I say - You write - You learn!
PRIMUS THREE
by Lin Y. Cawthra
Book #1 in the Science Fiction series
SPACE VOYAGERS
ISBN #: 1893906000
Published by: The MAZE Publishing Company
Book also available at :
http://www.spacevoyagers.net
http://www.themazepublishingco.com
http://www.ebookstand.com/m/linycawthra
