Adult – Cyberpunk -sci-fi. Meet Petri Dish

Have you ever had a terrible secret you didn’t want anyone to know? Petri does and it may get her killed. Life is hard on Upworld, especially for the residents of Under City, and it’s even harder for those who don’t fit in. Petri has alway been different and now those differences may cost her life. Her one hope is to leave the only home she’s ever known while evading the mob that’s calling for her blood. But Petri has never been outside of her sector of Under City, never mind off the planet. And the laws of Upworld forbid people like her from leaving. Will Petri overcome the odds and make good her escape? Maybe…with a little help from her friends.

This second installment in the Petri Dish Chronicles finds Petri and her friends traveling from planet to planet in Daji’s spaceship, the Ruba, searching for a new home. But it’s a challenge for Petri to find a place where she can be confident that the dangerous secrets she carries within her will remain hidden, and Daji is losing patience with her indecision. As tensions between Petri and Daji reach critical mass, the most frightening part of Petri’s past catches up with her, and the question facing the motley crew changes from, “where will they live?” to “will they survive?”

A creative Page turner – Book 1 – RAINBOW DREAMS *****

“Rainbow Dreams” by Mistral Dawn is a page-turner. You can’t help rooting for Petri, a struggling outcast in a cruel world. She’s a hybrid with forbidden powers and, when Petri came into her powers, “they hadn’t brought an instruction manual with them.” This creative alien world can be seen as mirroring the stratified society in our world. Upworlders have luxuries and security unknown to the struggling Underworlders. And for poor Upworlders, ”their one comfort in life” came from feeling better off than and superior to Underworlders. Plot, world, and characters are all excellent, and it’s nicely set up for a sequel. Well done!

Superb Sci-Fi stories- Book 2 INTRINSIC CONNECTIONS *****

I greatly enjoyed RAINBOW DREAMS, the Petri Dish Chronicles Book One. Such is my pessimism, that when I love the first book of a series, I often await its sequel with a little apprehension. “Will it be as good as its predecessor?” I worry. Thankfully, with Mistral Dawn’s latest, my fears were unjustified, emphatically so.

Firstly, I would like to echo the synopsis: it’s advisable to read the first book before the second. Sounds obvious, I know, but this is a true series; the characters develop significantly from the beginning of the first to the end of the second.

In a way, INTRINSIC CONNECTIONS is a departure from RAINBOW DREAMS – but not in a bad way. Sci-fi aficionados will be particularly impressed by the quality of the speculative thinking. Some of the ideas are, as far as I know, completely novel, which is an achievement in itself. The “bad guys”, the Arcanum, are superb, completely unlike anything I’ve read before. They might look like Area 51 style aliens, but their power is absolute. Daji, a feared Paka warrior, is puny compared to the Arcanum and its collective consciousness. However, it appears they may have met their match, in more ways than one.