Outpost

Initial premise sounded good: humans trapped inside of a high-tech alien prison, who are at war with other aliens. The secret to victory lays in the Italian Renaissance. Strange... I had to read it. First off, the prison isn't as 'high-tech' as described on the dustcover- the security consists of chain-driven robots. As hokey as it sounds, the first quarter of the book is actually really interesting as the prison's defenses degrade to the point where the humans can plan an escape. They create factions, design blueprints and the plot thickens. If more of the story took place in the prison, it would have been much more interesting. It had lots of potential. Then they escaped, as expected and some of the story goes downhill. And I must say that I hate telepathy unbacked by any science in sci-fi. With a tool like telepathy, anything is possible without any backing... it's a weak inclusion to any book without a science backbone. But really, it was an enjoyable book to follow the characters (good and bad) to the end and to see what the Italian Renaissance had to do with anything!

Where to begin (and keep this review concise)? I just read this book again, for the second time, after several years of its sitting on the shelf. From the other reviews you can get a good idea of the plot. Frankly it is a fun book to read. There is good character development; you identify with the protagonist and care about what happens to her. I also stayed curious throughout the book about the various storyline fragments. The author tosses them out in seemingly disparate ways. You anticipate that eventually the pieces will come together and you will make sense of it all, which indeed happens by the end of the book. This is SF-Lite. Easy summer reading or airport escapism. It's your typical time-travelesque (altered timeline) story, temporal paradoxes and all. Humans are on the verge of extinction because of the evil doings of other beings that can travel through time and change our history. It gives the term "Machiavellian" a whole new twist. Things get tied-up just a little too conveniently at the very end, though. Felicitas, our heroine, rights the wrongs by traveling to the past herself and fixing things. The Italians get to rout the French (with Felicitas's surreptitious help) in the 15th & 16th centuries. Time paradoxes and other loose ends magically take care of themselves (HAH!). All is done with the hope that humanity will breath a collective sigh of relief when the future properly reknits. Does it? You'll have to read the book. Despite this shallowness, it has its clever moments and is a pleasant and entertaining investment of one's time. Buy the paperback.

Imagine the perfect prison. It would be completely automated, all of the prisoners would be docile, and it would be on an uninhabited planet. This is exactly where Felicitas, a 17-year-old girl, finds herself one day. She, "wakes up," with no memories of actually committing a crime, and no memories of her childhood. She soon finds that other prisoners are waking up, and that some have been awake for quite awhile. Her prison is breaking down. The equipment which was meant to guard the prisoners and keep them docile is failing. Many of the prisoners who are awake now, are planning on escape. Felicitas is a key to their escape because of certain things she knows. Unfortunately she can't remember those things. Outpost is a very good book. It does have some weak points, but for Scott Mackay's first science fiction novel it is a stellar performance.

It's been a while since I read a book in one session. I just couldn't leave "Outpost" untill I was done.The book tells the tale of the great escape from a prison on a distant planet, where the brainwashed inmates' only crime is to be descendents of political prisoners from the past.A very recommendable book, describing how people react on coming out of deep amnesia. The book also deals with as different issues as time- travel and what future impact Machiavelli's "The Prince" might have.

Outpost is one of the strangest books I've read in a while. Not that this is a bad thing. At first, it's not like Sci Fi at all, in fact I can't really compare it to anything. You don't find out what's really going on until the last portion of the book. But that aside, Outpost is a great book. You might wanna wait for papaerback though.