Santuario by G. B. Gordon

Science Fiction/Mystery

I am on the Round the World Cruise and have limited Internet.   I'm using this time to catch up on my TBR pile on my ereaders.  My posts are short with no links or graphics.  Check my travel blog to see where I have been and where I am going.

The prolog set the stage for Santuario.  A Santuarian generation ship landed on Jarovegur 200 years ago.  Jarovegur already had inhabits and they segregated the newcomers to an island that they called Santuario hoping they would fail to survive.  The opposite happened.   There is a move to end the isolation and not everyone is in favor of that happening.

That is where the mystery comes in.  There has been a murder on Santuario and someone from the mainland is sent to help in the investigation.  While the story is based on finding the murderer it is really a story about human interaction.  The story is very character driven.  The two main characters are from opposite societies, Alex from Santuario and Bengt from the mainland.  From Bengt's viewpoint nothing is as it seems and from Alex's viewpoint Bengt does not begin to understand how things work on Santuario.  Their struggle to work together is the main focus for the story and allows the issues to surface and develop.

Much of the story revolves around the move to open up the island and the effect it will have.  The mystery is there to bring the characters together and to allow all the issues to be brought out into the open.

I liked the story and was drawn into the conflict between Alex and Bengt.  Using two different cultures on the same planet has been used before but it still works to set a stage filled with tension and misunderstanding.  While there was an end and a solution to the story there is plenty of room for more stories set on Jarovegur.

Riptide Publishing published Santuario by G.B. Gordon in 2012.

I received an ARC of Santuario from Netgalley.