Seeds of Change

Ever wonder what might happen with climate change her on Earth 60 years from now? Ever think of humans searching for another planet in order to survive? Seeds of Change will take you on a journey to explore some possibilities. I am not a fan of SF but found myself glued to the very end. Thomson has penned a unique story with her main character Jey using her telepathic healing skills to make a better world on Aride for her new community. This book is well written, interesting, and thought provoking!

I honestly wanted to give this book 5 stars and would have been OK with 4 stars, but it just doesn't fully satisfy me. The symbolism between good and evil is pretty clear.
The New Sparta colony comes a very long way to be unprepared to do anything but maintain the greed-lust that apparently is representative of the greed-lust of Earth's fossil fuel industry. There are some empty parts here and I don't truly like any of the characters beyond recognizing the traits that I'd choose to admire or reject in any social group.
Still, it's an interesting story about the holistic universe and one worth pondering. It's a pleasant read and part of a more robust and stimulating conversation about where we go when there's no 'there' left on our planet.

I have nothing against dystopian novels. Written with care and inventiveness, their dark and gritty mood can be a guilty pleasure for me. However, this genre tends to suffer (along with epic fantasy) from a plague of derivatives. And right now we are seeing a glut of climate change dystopian media. Enter Seeds of Change by Willow Thomson. The author in this gambit decides to take a more uplifting note, and while that is a bit different, it is not well executed.

Climate change. Yep, we are here. Our heroine has joined a group of colonists in an effort to escape a dying earth. What follows is a tale of self-growth and survival.

My main feeling after reading this story was an overwhelming sense of mediocrity. The twists are predictable. The characters rather bland. The dialogue, and prose adequate but nothing outstanding. And the plot? To be blunt, rather boring.

What Seeds of Change does have going for it are no glaring errors. The aforementioned plot is cohesive. The characters, not cardboard. Effectively it seems what we have here is a solid foundation, it is just missing a compelling spark. If this was a piece of art I would call it an under painting.

Willow Thomson's Seeds of Change is a book. And in that book, there is a story. You've probably read something similar before, and likely will again. There's nothing wrong with that by itself- all tales hearken back to something else. It just needs a bit more color to stand out.

This is a great story about a pair that are doing their best to survive on Earth as homeopathic healers. Jada is the main protagonist, of sorts, who sees an add looking for volunteers for a colony ship and decides she wants to participate. She is able to, with very little effort, to convince her colleague and friend, Celie, to join her.

A short period later, they embark on a bus journey to the colony ship. After arrival at the ship, the story revolves around their preparations and getting to know a few new characters. The ship eventually launches and during their trip, there is some trouble that arises due to Celie’s daughter, Talleh. She is empathic and feels that there is a negativity among some of the passengers. They find that there are some on the ship that aren’t there for an altruistic fresh start for the humans aboard.

The ship arrives at the destination planet and they find that there is very little negative about the situation. The atmosphere is close to Earth, but not really directly breathable for long periods of time. They begin setting up their colony after dealing with the few people aboard the ship that didn’t seem to be going along with the other passenger’s plans.

They get a colony setup on the planet and much of the story revolves around the two healers, and the empathic daughter, Talleh. Soon they find that there is more sentience around them than would be readily apparent by the naked eye.

They are joined by another colony ship that is related to their miscreants aboard their own ship. This group is there more to begin mining operations etc. than to colonize. The remainder of the story generally revolves around the interactions between these two colonies and how they try to work out their difference in agendas.
I did enjoy the story. I was interested to find out what was going to happen next as they progressed in their adventure. I’ll admit that I was thrown a little by the lack of conflict and adversity.

During their long bus trip, the description of things around was very depressing, yet there were no resulting issues to come from it. At one stop, an important member of the crew did not show up and they were waiting for hours after their appointed time. Then, she just shows up and they leave. It seemed very anticlimactic.

This type of theme prevailed in the story. Anything that came up as adversity was relatively quickly overcome and everybody was happy and moved on. This gives the story a very upbeat theme and gives a view of how this type of activity may progress if everything goes according to plan with only a few glitches.
While I know this story was not meant to be Hard SciFi, I could not help but notice that the colony ship only had about three hundred members. As most people interested in colony ship type stories probably know, that is not enough for genetic diversity in a new colony. There would start to be genetic effects due to inbreeding several generations in the future. While carrying frozen embryos etc. can help with that number, it is still a very small number to start with. It’s just something that popped into my mind while reading…

I feel that if you enjoy SciFi and some Fantasy then you’ll enjoy this story. They story does not have episodes that result in fighting or military type battles, so it revolves mainly around the characters and their adventure. My only hope is that more people follow their lead and the colony receives more people to insure their long term survival. I guess I’ll see in future installment of the adventure!

I liked the heroine, who was very sensitive and smart.

This story was so captivating that I would read any sequel that this author writes.

Considering that we are in the middle of a crisis which involves a nasty virus which has spread world-wide and we have been mistreating the Earth for a long time, this book is pretty apt reading.

Jey is an intuitive healer and as there is nothing left for her on Earth, she joins her friend Celie (and her daughter Talleh) on a spaceship to colonise a new planet. There are many different personalities and skill sets on board the spaceship and it isn't long before there is trouble brewing on board.....

I found this an absolutely beautiful story, I have to say. It flowed so well, and I loved that Jey and Talleh were so tuned in to things that most of us would not even notice. There were magical elements to the story and if you have a scientific bent this could be difficult reading as you have to suspend belief, but I really loved it. There is such a hopefulness about the story, I want to read more.

5 stars from me. Looking forward to reading the next book in the series :)

I liked Jey and Celia and much of the herbal/nature based storyline. I do admit to wishing there was a little less homeopathy, but that's a personal thing and if you can get past that, this was an entertaining read.