Ryk, I started your new book Arrival. It was a total disappointment. I tried to get into it with no success. Please go back to the Frontier Saga! I read all 15 of that series and fell in love with the series. I need tho know if Nathan is going to live! Please go back to what your fans know and love.....
Ernie, Ryk has stated that the Arrival is a stand alone / one off book that he wrote before he started the Frontier Sage. Apart from the Net Casts, Ryk has stated that he intends to focus solely on the Frontier Saga episodes from here on out. (To be fair you cannot blame the guy for wanting to put out something different - and he did specifically state that it was going to be different from the FS)
As for Arrival, I finished it today! I Loved it! Found it very hard to put down as usual. I think it fit in quite nicely in the larger Frontiers saga Universe as a Pre Bio-digital Plague story.
One thing I would like to highlight here though! With the Bio-Digital Plague, how did People survive on that planet? The Vaccine would probably be to complicated to synthesis for people plunged back into the stone ages. (Seems to me to be a very handy counter espionage tool though. How were the Jung or Terran Spies to stop themselves from turning Blue)
Another thing, Where the "Native" Blue's actually an indigenous species or the result of a previous attempt to settle the planet sent by & covered up by the syndicate?
And another thing! Why do people in the top political positions in stories always turn out to be Asshats!?! The future seems bleak politically speaking...
@four-islands I agree, really enjoyed the Arrival story and what it implied about going to another planet. We humans just can't succeed in taking over everything!
I personally did like this one as it took a different direction from what Ryk has already graced us with. I also took this as a Pre-massive space presence. There was a comment made by Jack about being the first Human to walk on an Exo Sol planet, which has me thinking this was well prior to the BDP.
As for the illness they fell victim too. If it had not been for Jack and having already "gone native" (pardon the pun), then Jack finding Frank and the rest of the crew in the nick of time with the knowledge of what was going on and how to fix it.
@four-Islands, I agree. They are all asshats, but I would have personally like a wee bit more of a back story on the Eden project and why they bailed.
Ernie, do not worry.
Arrival was the first book I ever wrote. I wrote it about 18 years ago, when I was working as a paramedic at a very slow station. (Big Sur, CA) Back in 2011, when I decided to try and digital self-publish, I rewrote it. But during the rewrite, my mind kept wandering back to the Saga, and all the details I had worked out in my mind over the previous years. I realized that the Saga was what I really wanted to write, so I put Arrival away and wrote the Saga instead.
The reason I published Arrival now (other than the fact that friends and family were demanding that I do so) was that I could process edits (from copy editors and proofreaders) while working on the outlines for part 2 of the Saga, and it would not interrupt or delay my production timeline for the Saga. (Unlike the Netcasts. It seems, I'm not one of those writers that can write more than one story at a time.)
I have no desire to write anything outside of the Frontiers Saga universe. I may, in the future, write stories, that while set in the Frontiers Saga universe, might not follow Nathan, Cameron, Vlad, and Jessica. However, they will never interfere with the main Saga.
Arrival served as a financial crutch to get us through during the outlining phase of part 2. Even with 15 books behind us, if you don't put out something new every few months, revenue drops drastically.
Ryk
@rykbrown to me the book made sense. It describes how a planet was settled, and how it affected people, in a way not expected. Not all the planets in the Saga series can be so compatible to human life, or so it seems. I thought it was a good book. Flowed well in the story telling.
I actually stumbled across this site because I was hoping there would be a sequel to Arrival before I had even finished the book.(busy mom of 4 so it took awhile to finish) I enjoyed it. Of course I have not read any of your other books so my opinion could change. I am starting the first in your frontier saga now.
Cheers!
