Bruce Von Stiers

I got a press release for a new novel that sounded pretty interesting. The novel was about a mystical priestess on a faraway planet. The press material made it seem like it would be something well worth checking out. But as a writer, I know that sometimes you can put a positive spin on something even though what you’re writing about isn’t good at all. The book was supposed to be the first in a whole series. I decided to find out if the novel rose to the level that the press material indicated. The name of the novel is Moem The Beginning. The author of the book is Linda Whiddon. The book was published by Trafford Publishing.

Two things about the novel need to be mentioned right away. First of all, Trafford is an on-demand publishing house. That means they’ll print up only as many as been ordered at one time. So there aren’t 2,000 copies of Moem sitting in a warehouse gathering dust waiting to be shipped out. The second thing probably has a lot to do with the first thing. The punctuation in this novel leaves a lot to be desired. There are bunches and bunches of missing or misplaced commas, colons, semi-colons and quotation marks throughout the book. Now, grant you, I am not an English professor or even a prolific writer. I even screw-up lots of times (as some readers of my reviews have let me know).I’m not sure who was responsible for the proofing of the novel, the author or a Trafford staff member. But apparently whoever did the proofreading needed to do a better job. On the positive side, aside from it being a little inconvenience, the punctuation situation didn’t detract anything from the story.

As the book opens, we meet Captain Bingham and Lieutenant Rawlings of the starship Verboten. They are under attack from an alien force. These forces were comprised of cyborgs led by the evil Mahakala. The prologue tells of the battle and gives a brief overview of what makes Mahakala tick.

Then the story moves on to a brief history of the planets and peoples involved. We learn about the planets Melina and Betrix. We find that Bergun is a planet thought to be a billion years old. Some of these planets have been destroyed by Mahakala in his thrust for vengeance.

Next we meet the lead character of the story, Moem. She is a priestess on the planet of Katchwari. Unbeknownst to her, Moem is about to embark on a journey that will put her into the middle of this planetary extinction plan of Mahakala’s.

Moem is having a baby. She is not supposed to bear a child. She takes herself away from the rest of the priests in the temple and secludes herself. This is a prelude to her supposed death by her own hand. In the world of the priests, you can leave your human form when you die and move on to a spiritual plane. Then later you can incarnate back into human form.

What Moem doesn’t know is that the spirits have a plan in place for her and the child. Even though Moem thought that having the baby and leaving the temple was her own idea, it was planted there by the spirits. Her child would be a savior to the planet of Katchwari, ridding it of disease and death.

Throughout the rest of the novel, we get to see the various struggles Moem incurs while keeping her child safe. Not only are there natural forces working against her, agents of Mahakala want to make sure that neither she nor the child survives.

I was trying to figure out how to characterize the novel. It has science fiction elements, moral issues, fantasy elements and man against nature parts as well. There is a spiritual aspect with the gods working against the hellish wrath of Mahakala. I guess that the book is a combination of all of those elements and could probably be described best as a fantasy/ science fiction novel. There is a lot of attention to detail as Moem struggles to give birth and then protect her child from the elements.

Moem The Beginning was an interesting novel. According to the press material, Linda Whiddon spent a number of years putting together the basis for this novel and its upcoming sequels. Whiddon’s descriptions and attention to detail make sure that the reader gets a good sense of Moem’s feelings and her physical surroundings. The storyline provides pretty decent man against nature/ good versus evil plot threads. Aside from the punctuation irritation, I really enjoyed Moem The Beginning.

You can find out more information about Moem The Beginning at www.moemchronicles.com. You also might want to check out the Trafford web site. It can be found at www.trafford.com.

Note: In correspondence with the author after this review was initially written, I learned that the punctuation problem occurred because of incompatibilities between the document format the author submitted and the one that the publisher used to typeset the book with. Ms. Whiddon said that she had thought that everything was straightened out, only to discover later that the printed copies still had the punctuation errors. She is trying to make sure that new copies of the novel don't have the errors that the earlier ones did. BVS