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True Deception
01/01/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
Although I can appreciate how publishers want to meld some audience types together, it would be foolish to expect all such experiments to be successful. Buy True Deception in the USA - or Buy True Deception in the UK  check out website: www.tor-forge.com
Although I can appreciate how publishers want to meld some audience types together, it would be foolish to expect all such experiments to be successful. Case in point is Patricia Waddell's 'True Deception' which actually lives up to its own title. Despite the cover saying 'Paranormal/Romance' it's actually supposed to be Science Fiction' and rarely pays that much lip service to any of them.
Really good Science Fiction has unique twists that make it difficult to transpose the plot into any other genre. This story is a basic run-of-the-mill plot of insurgence against a rebel government. You couldn't tell from reading this really that its on another planet. The motivation is to bring two characters together so they can fall in love against this backdrop. Redon Rawn's motivation is to avenge his dead wife and child when he's sent undercover. Kala Char'ari is a female freedom fighter. They have similar agendas so hardly surprising they'd get together but there's no real spark and little connection to the reader. Although I'm not a romance reader, there has been enough of it in Science Fiction for me to know the difference, I doubt if any of our female SF readers will find it on par with anything they've read before. As to 'paranormal'? Well, none of that's included here neither.
To write Science Fiction you have to have a certain knack to how it works and not to think any old thing will work. It is probably a lot easier for an SF writer to up the romantic element than it is for a romance writer to inject SF into a romance story. As it is, author Waddell does neither particularly well and ultimately ends up being a dull formulaic read. Mind you, that could also apply to more romance fiction as well relying on an over-clichéd plot. About the old thing missing here is that the two characters don't fall our with each other over their aims. I think what annoys me most is that it could have been done so much better. Don't say you weren't warned.
GF Willmetts
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