Godeena by Stjepan Varesevac Cobets

Godeena was a fast paced, easy to read military sci-fi which followed a very familiar formula for the genre.

Godeena was a fast paced, easy to read military sci-fi which followed a very familiar formula for the genre.

We follow Major Henry Broncon who has been tasked with a dangerous mission having just been awarded a medal for bravery in his assault against the Anskers. Broncon is being sent to Godeena, a planet in which no research group has yet to return from. When an SOS signal is captured by the granddaughter of a military personal, Broncon is named as the man for the job.

In order to have any success he will have to recruit some of the worlds deadliest prisoners, people with nothing left to lose. No one else is willing to sacrifice their lives for what is likely a suicide mission. Not only will Henry have to battle with the wits of people who wish him dead, he is also fighting his own demons from the war with the Anskers. Will any of them have the strength to make it out alive?

While I did have some issues with the execution of Godeena, I will admit that every time I picked it up, I was reminded of what made me want to get into sci-fi in the first place, and why I want to keep exploring the genre. We have some classic sci-fi tropes in here, which although simple and don’t paint outside the box, were enjoyable to read. Personally, I enjoyed the elements of space exploration, some of the themes hinted at along the way and the easy of which this story was consumed. I also liked the military training sequences and some of the back story we were able to uncover along the way. I think that Godeena has set itself up in a way to show the reader how much the author has learnt and grown by the time the sequel comes around.

Here comes the critique, Godeena was very easy to follow but is likely to frustrate readers. This book was very much tell and not show, we are told what is happening on every page but don’t get the chance to really experience it. Perhaps the most obvious example of this was in the military training sequences, we were being told that prisoners were playing with weapons again. Each person chose a weapon based on their previous experience then were automatically good with the weapon before moving on to the next person. We didn’t get to experience how these people felt when they had something of power in their hands again after such a long time, we didn’t get the blow back of aftershock, or the smell of the plasma as it hit the target. Simple things that could have been used to draw the reader in. Because of this it was hard for me to care or relate too much about any of the characters or the mission we were going on.

Granted I can see where the author has tried to input some personality into his characters through the dialogue. Unfortunately, the speech between our crew felt overly formal and forced throughout. This may be due to the fact that this is a translated work, I have experienced this before when the author’s first language is not English, and this may read different in the native tongue. I will say one of the characters Kir did hook me enough to see where their storyline was going due to being a split personality and those lines of good prisoner verses bad prisoner were split quite well in my opinion.

The last thing I will mention is the ease in which the story progressed. Every time there was an obstacle in a characters place, this would have a convenient solution for the sake of story progression. There was very little conflict, even during the action sequences. For this type of tale, the elements within the book could have been built up rather easily to heighten the stakes in my opinion.

Despite the critique, I wouldn’t say Godeena is a bad book, far from it. I mentioned earlier it was extremely easy to read if you can get past the narration style. It would be a good pallet cleanser if you were looking for something that didn’t take a lot of brain power and provided that quick, entertaining sci-fi fix. It is also a debut, and a passion project for an indie author so I am inclined to forgive a lot of the learnings that come within that space. I am interested to see how Cobetts grows from the experience of writing his first book because the potential is absolutely there.