Reviewed by Carissa
TITLE: Taijiku
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Andre
PUBLISHER: Less Than Three Press
LENGTH: 41 pages
BLURB:
Angela’s past is more than a little rocky, and that rocky path has led her to finish up her juvenile detention sentence on the Yemaya, an alien underwater ship devoted to observation and research. Part of its maintenance crew, at the bottom rung of the status ladder, Angela doesn’t see much excitement forthcoming.
But that was before encountering the fearsome Taijiku or meeting her crew mate Stella, leaving Angela with a completely different problem and unable to say which is the greater challenge: giant sea monsters or falling in love.
REVIEW:
(The fire alarms have been going off in my house since 6am. I have had 2 hours of sleep and like 5 cups of coffee. I am this close to burning the house down just to see the fuckers bleep their last. You have been warned.)
Paroled to work as a part of the maintenance crew of the underwater research ship Yemaya, Angela might not be happy with life, but it sure beats being stuck back in juvi. If she plays her cards right, she might be able to find a way to stay on ship when her sentence is done, and maybe even get a chance to see the feared Taijiku. But when she gets up close and personal with the sea creature, she might just find that she should have been careful what she wished for.
This short story really felt more like the opening few chapters of a larger book, than a story unto itself. There is a lot of world building that needed to happen, and most the time I was left lost and confused as to what was being talked about. Mostly the confusion centered around what the hell a Taijiku was. I’m not sure if it was the name of that particular sea thing or if was the name of the species (it was also referred to as kaiju, so I’m thinking it just might be the name given to that specific one, but I have no real clue, to be honest). I also have no clue what Taijiku is other than some type of sea creature. I don’t know if it is an alien or from earth. I don’t know why it is doing what it is doing, or even where it is doing it.
Basically all I know is that Angela was in juvi (for some reason, I have no idea), that she has some type of tracking chip in her, she got paroled to work on the Yemaya as a janitor, and that she is into chicks. Oh, and she is also obsessed with the Taijiku (again, for reasons I was never very clear on).
Everything felt incredibly rushed in this story. The romance between Stella and Angela barely got any page time, which made it hard to connect with Stella at all. In fact, the only real character that I came to enjoy was the alien Lionel. He was pretty cool, and I wished we had gotten more information about his species/planet.
So much of the story was taken up with Taijiku–which I wouldn’t have minded if it hadn’t been mostly constant conversations and scenes that all basically boiled down to “I really want to see Taijiku.” It never bothered to explain what or why or how. Which when you are building a believable scifi story, is kinda important. I didn’t need all the details, but I sure as hell would have liked at least a few.
RATING:
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