Stephen Spanoudis, Final Orbit: Not All Ghosts Are Human: The Autobiography of Mario Ng (The Republic of Dreams) (The Other Pages.org, 2021) 215 pages, fiction, $9.99 US. Order here.
I am a poet and I read mostly poetry and nonfiction. In 2023, I decided to read more fiction. I want to learn how to write better prose to write the stories my grandparents wanted me to write. Better late after their deaths than never. And there is no better way to learn how to write than to read. And it seems the world is conspiring to help make that happen: I always wanted to join a book club and that happened in 2024. What is the group interested in reading? Fiction. And in 2023, Stephen Spanoudis gifted me (out of the blue) two of his novels.
Both these novels are part of a series. Final Orbit is the 8th book but is written as a prequel to the others. This review will focus on Final Orbit. A review of the second book is forthcoming.
Final Orbit took a while to get off the ground (pun intended). You had these two incredibly determined and intelligent people overcoming underprivileged backgrounds to succeed in challenging careers (astronaut and musician, respectively). They have fulfilling lives. Everything seems to be winding down to a kind of calmer precursor to retirement and I'm wondering "but am I only halfway through the book?" And then BOOM (literally), the real story kicks off. And takes your breath away, rips your heart out, and leaves you gasping and needing to take a walk around the room a few times. You're going to need to take a minute. That's just the first drop of this roller coaster.
This book is equal parts future dystopia, science fiction, drama, romance, psychological study, and inspirational fiction, with a bone thrown to the Harry Potter in the briefest way possible, and for once the U.S. is a side character in major "historical" events. It's popular today to categorize fiction as narrowly as possible for social media tags. But it's difficult to categorize this in any way more niche than simply "fiction" because it fits so many tags at once.
I'm tempted to say there could be maybe a little too much happening here. It's a lot to process emotionally and mentally for an average reader. It's definitely written for an intelligent, quick-thinking type who will be mindful to shepherd themselves kindly through the emotional ups and downs. But there are valuable nuggets of wisdom one can carry forward into the real world as well.
