The Loki Exodus: A Novella

by J. E. Tabor

A review by INFAMOUS🦀

 

This sci-fi/action novella is an interesting title for several reasons. Ultimately, it shows to me that good stories sometimes shouldn’t be rushed into publication, if they fail at delivering a sense of fulfillment to the readers. 

The Loki Exodus, in my opinion, is exactly what would make a reader like myself very frustrated because it offers such a compelling story, and characters, but in the end fails to bring it back home due to the length of the work itself. With a total of 64 pages, TLE reads and feels like a mere prologue, not like an epub you would purchase at retail price. Within those 64 pages, we merely get a glimpse of everything. Did it make me interested in the world we are presented with? Certainly. Did it introduce characters that are relatable and even memorable? Absolutely. Did it leave me a satisfied customer? No.

PLOT:

The story begins with a 3-member crew navigating a spaceship to make landings on the prison moon named Loki. The mission: pick up an individual, an inmate, who can help on a mission which involves finding a derelict ship called the Leviathan, and the dangerous content this mysterious ship holds.

Jane is the leader of this mission, along with her colleague Bhutto. Yes, two ‘strong, independent’ women who are actually not annoying, and fun to read. The mission presents only one small issue, this key person needed to find the Leviathan, is now working for the jailer who runs the prison with an iron fist as – take a guess – his personal torturer! He doesn’t want to quit his cushy job and the jailer certainly wouldn’t want to give up his torturer without having something to say on the matter.

Basically all 64 pages of this short story are about rescuing the inmate/torturer without getting killed by the jailer and his crew of prison guards.

 

CHARACTERS:

Some readers might complain about the lack of strong masculine leads in fiction today. However, we can’t jump to conclusions when encountering a strong female character (or two, such as is the case here) if that strong female character is written in a way that feels spontaneous and organic. Jane is a fun female lead because she is relatable and has her limitations. What I liked about her is the devotion to her sense of duty. She has strong beliefs and she will stick by them.

But my favorite character is Jane’s mission partner, Bhutto. Now, maybe I’ve got this all wrong, but from how the author describes Bhutto, she kinda reminds me of a Teyonah Parris, who plays Monica Rambeau in The Marvels, but with a ‘brain transplant’ that now makes her cool, smart, likable, of good judgement, level headed, and funny, to top it all off. Bhutto to me is the character who steals the show, and every time the ‘camera’ centered on her my interest peaked (Mr Tabor, give us a Bhutto spinoff please!)

 

CONCLUSIONS:

It is very hard for me to rate a story of this size and with so many stones left unturned. This felt like a movie trailer, no, like a movie teaser trailer, actually. It left me frustrated not to learn more about the characters, the world and the Leviathan and her dangerous cargo. This is a 64-page title that should have been 640 pages, if done to customer satisfaction. Obviously authors can act as they please, but in my opinion, paying customers deserve more. There is a time and a place for short stories: Substack, anthologies, bonus content to other books.

I really hope the author will indulge us with a more ‘meaty’ book next time around, and give the readers what they pay for: a fulfilling experience with a sense of completion once they reach the last page.

🦀