Preamble

I am just beginning to dive into Elite Dangerous, and to get in the sci-fi mood, I picked up this huge time, universe and species spanning space opera trilogy.

The three titles in the Origin Trilogy include Atlantis Gene, Atlantis Plague and Atlantis World, and I made the mistake of reading the first two in short succession, and then the last title a couple of months later.

http://www.agriddle.com/novels



This is a trilogy that needs to be read one book after the other. The plot is so complex, the events so intertwined, and with so much jumping backward and forward in time during the story, that I found it frustratingly hard to pick it up again for the third book.

So, treat the three books as one big story, and read them as three chapters of one big, thick book, for the best chance that you will be actually be able to follow along!

Storyline (no spoilers)

The Origin trilogy adds a new twist to the question 'Where did we come from?'

The first book, 'Atlantis Gene' has all the ingredients of a compelling story - mysterious object buried in the ice, ancient para military cult dedicated to protecting its secrets, beautiful scientist (Dr Kate Warner) trying to unravel the mystery with the help of a deadly ex-military sidekick and love interest. The book ends with the release of a plague that according to the blurb, will 'force the next stage of human evolution--even if it means killing 99.9% of the world's population.'

The second book, 'Atlantis Plague' details the ravages of the plague. The blurb says: 'In Marbella, Spain, Dr. Kate Warner awakens to a horrifying reality: the human race stands on the brink of extinction. A pandemic unlike any before it has swept the globe. Nearly a billion people are dead--and those the Atlantis Plague doesn't kill, it transforms at the genetic level. A few rapidly evolve. The remainder devolve.' Our heroine tries to find a cure for the plague, while at the same time unravelling the mystery of who is behind it. She gets quite a surprise.

The third book 'Atlantis World' unveils a number of mysteries: how did we get here, who was behind the Atlantis plague and what does it all mean? Again, the blurb lays out the roadmap, "Kate Warner cured the global pandemic, and she thought she could cure herself. She was wrong. And she was wrong about the scope of the Atlantis conspiracy. Humanity faces a new threat, an enemy beyond imagination. With her own time running out and the utter collapse of human civilization looming, a new hope arrives: a coded message from a potential ally."

The Good

The writing is tight, and the dialogue (often a challenge for a new writer like AG Riddle) flows nicely, and believably. The nerdy scientist teamed with the muscle bound warrior is a bit of a cliche, but luckily doesn't distract from the pacing or credibility of the plot. It might have been very nice to see the roles reversed, (nerdy male scientist, muscle bound female warrior) but AG Riddle is playing to his audience nicely here and the popularity of the books shows this was the right decision. The whole 'unveiling of the origins of man' is an intriguing premise that kept me engaged through at least the first two books.


The scope and sweep of the drama is truly space operatic - entire worlds are wiped out, populations enslaved, continents flooded, fleets dismembered. This isn't a book about the end of Earth as we know it, it is about the end of the Universe, as we don't know it!

And the science is intriguing. Viruses and antiviruses, gene modificiation, cloning (both of body and mind), interstellar travel and space warfare.


The not-so-much

But I have to admit a lot of the alien technology left me incredulous or confused. Viruses and their cures that can be transmitted by a mysterious 'radiation' - I felt it was never credibly explained how biological weapons could be transmitted by 'radio waves'. Resurrections that can be effected by reviving clones with the full memories of their original 'persona', even when that individual dies in another space and time - another one that I didn't feel was properly explained. Now, I'm pretty open to futuristic technologies being assumed, and not fully explained ('beam me up Scottie'), but there were quite a few 'aw, come on...how the heck...' moments in this series.

And the plotting of the third book really tested me.

Not just because I had to work so hard to pick up the convoluted plot after putting the books down for a couple of months. Riddle really ties himself in knots at the end, with doppelgangers (doubles) of the key characters, reliving each other's memories in one time period, fighting each other in another, travelling through time and constantly being killed and resurrected (I kid you not, one of them is, ridiculously, killed 100 times)!

Sound confusing? It darn well was. All that back-and-forthing is done in order to explain the back story behind the origins of humanity, but you end with a somewhat frustrating reading experience.

The author, AG Riddle, admits in the post script that he was worried about how the third book would be received as he had to do a lot of plot wrangling to tie up all the loose ends. With good cause!

In the end, I got it (well, most of it)...but I felt he made me work too hard for the reward of finishing!

Conclusion

I enjoyed the first book, was a bit lukewarm about the second but still engaged, and hoping for a slam dunk finale, and then disappointed by the third.

I'd rate them like this:

Atlantis gene: 4/5
Atlantis plague: 3/5
Atlantis world: 2/5

Overall: 3/5

Importantly though, it's revived my interest in epic space battle stories!

Nice review, thanks for taking the time!

This sounds a lot like the Plague Wars series by David Van Dyke. There are 10 books now, and it looks like the series started at around the same time as the Origin series. If you liked the Origin series, I highly recommend them.

I believe the first book in the series (The Eden Plague: Book 0) is free on Amazon Kindle. The scope of the saga expands quickly after the first one or two books.

I just finished the 3rd book yesterday. (four days, three books. ) It's a neat story.

g.

Yep thats definitely the way to read it!

H

If you want some military themed hard sci-fi, Amazon's got a good sale on the first three books of the Star Carrier books today.

Star Carrier Kindle Deal

Nice review. I have taken to long time to read this.

The second and third book were horrible. I'll never get that time back.

I read them on my bus commute to work, but that isn't the point. Boo!

Thank you phd_doc!

While quite compelling,the first book needed (IMHO) toning down a bit.

As with the 'The Matrix', the 2nd the 3rd movies were panned by the critics but I felt obliged to watch them to see where the story went. On DVD, this was achieved quite quickly by fast forwarding through the fight scenes.
It's not as easy to skim through books in the same way, particularly on a kindle.

I'd love to see a synopsis of the last two books that I could read through in less than five minutes.

Thank you Heinkill for the recommendation, I quite enjoyed the first book but felt it was trying too hard to cram in every bit of folklore and conspiracy theory going.