REVIEW : The Stark Divide: Liminal Sky: The Ariadne Cycle Book #1- J. Scott Coatsworth

The Stark Divide: Liminal Sky Book Cover

Title: The Stark Divide: Liminal Sky
Series: The Ariadne Cycle Book #1
Author: J. Scott Coatsworth
Genre: LGBTQ Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction
Publisher: Other Worlds Ink
Release Date: July 10, 2020 Second Edition
Format: Kindle
Pages: 292
Source: Amazon

The Earth is in a state of collapse, with wars breaking out over resources and an environment pushed to the edge by human greed.

Three living generation ships have been built with a combination of genetic mastery, artificial intelligence, technology, and raw materials harvested from the asteroid belt. This is the story of one of them—43 Ariadne, or Forever, as her inhabitants call her—a living world that carries the remaining hopes of humanity, and the three generations of scientists, engineers, and explorers working to colonize her.

From her humble beginnings as a seedling saved from disaster to the start of her journey across the void of space toward a new home for the human race, The Stark Divide tells the tales of the world, the people who made her, and the few who will become something altogether beyond human.

Humankind has just taken its first step toward the stars.

Review by Ulysses Dietz

Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team

I was drawn to this book initially because of the character of Colin McAvery. The presence of a gay character, with a partner, in a sci-fi series. What I didn’t expect was that, while McAvery is central to the story, whose epic sweep covers thirty years in the life of the Ariadne project, he is just himself. My reading trends these past dozen years have taken me to books that feature gay characters, gay plotlines, gay context. That’s not really what Coatsworth does. He establishes Colin McAvery as one of the critical characters over the long arc of the plot, and never makes it about his being gay, or his relationship. Coatsworth does what sci-fi writers generally have not done previously: he makes McAvery’s being gay no big deal. It is a fact, ever-present; a fact of which we are reminded when necessary by the appearance of Colin’s boyfriend/partner/husband Trip.

This set me back at first, because that has been my reason for reading much of what I read for a long time now. Then I got caught up in Coatsworth’s startling vision; his scientific fantasy of a new colony formed by human genius on a failing Earth; a colony that could germinate and grow in the barren rock of an asteroid named Ariadne. The simultaneous brilliance and stupidity of humankind is the hub of this story, the squandered potential that gets put to use in creating a second chance for the human race.

The main cast of characters is not big, and only two of them appear in all of the three major segments of the book—McAvery, and Lex, the “World Mind” of the Ariadne project. Coatsworth has taken the contemporary interest in sentient AI and pushed it to its logical (fantastical?) conclusion. The author’s cinematic writing brings the world of Ariadne to life, and makes each of his characters as familiar as a member of our own family.

For a story that the author feels is hopeful, the carefully crafted cliffhanger of an ending felt terribly bleak to me. And yet, it is the beginning of a great adventure, and (of course) the first of a nine-part series of books. How much fun will it be to see this saga of human survival unfold at the hands of its gifted creator?