Cara Bristol, $0.99, ISBN 978-1-947203-31-0
Sci-fi Romance, 2021

From what I read on the book product web page, Cara Bristol’s Stone Cold Cyborg was previously published in some anthology, but this is a revised and expanded edition. Just how much it has been revised and expanded, however, I won’t know as I have nothing to compare this baby to.

Our stone cold cyborg is Dante Stone, who commands the warship Crimson Hawk. His ship picked up the survivors of a colony in a not-so-friendly planet Verde Omega. Those folks were pacifist hippie dipstick types that just want to live like how it was back on Earth ages ago, so they were easy picking for aliens bent on torture and massacre.

I know all of this within the first few paragraphs of this story, because the author isn’t hiding the fact that these characters are talking for the reader’s sake.

Some are handling it well, but others—” Brack shook her head. “Medical is doing their best to treat them, but the Crimson Hawk is a warship, not a hospital or psychiatric ward. Many of the colonists are exhibiting severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, others are displaying signs of paranoia.”

Brack, the Lieutenant Commander, is explaining to her boss what the ship is.

“Of all the possible planets, why the hell did they try to establish a settlement on Verde Omega? What were they thinking?”

“Probably that the natural resources offered tremendous potential. It’s a beautiful planet, much like Earth was once. If not for the proximity to Tyrania, it would have been colonized a long time ago.”

“But it is close to Tyrania.” The outcome had been predictable.

This is taking me right into “I know, you know, but let’s have a conversation anyway because we need to clue the reader in—hi reader, we love you!” territory.

Our heroine is an archivist, Miranda Lowell, who comes with a pet robot dog.

Things go straight into dumb territory when Doug wants to throw the dog out the airlock because animals may carry disease. First, if this is indeed the case, why did they allow the dog on board in the first place? Secondly, Miranda puts up a fight for a few unnecessary paragraphs, only to finally reveal that the dog is a machine. Why can’t she say this in the first place, oh my freaking god?

“I’m keeping my dog. You try to take him, and…and…you’ll be sorry!” Anger animated her entire face, giving him a glimpse of what she looked like when she was healthy.

That inappropriate, unwelcome sexual heat flared low in his abdomen. “Do not threaten me.” Dante leveled a stare that caused those under his command to quake in their boots. “The order stands. Now, move out of the way.”

I suppose at least the author has some self awareness. The sexual heat that comes up out of the blue, in a situation that is anything but arousing or erotic, is definitely inappropriate. Come on, surely there is a more graceful way to shoehorn in the sexy stuff?

Then, people start to vanish on board. Hmm, is the dog secretly a monster, like that thing in the original The Thing? Is one of the colonists a monster in disguise?

There are many ways for this plot to work, and the mystery could have become a pretty gripping thriller or horror under the right circumstances.

Instead, the revelation of the villain makes me groan because that thing already has a solid presence on board this ship—why on earth did it wait this long just to act?

That’s the problem with this story: sure, things happen here, but why they happen and how they happen all feel off, as if the author made things up without giving much thought to the process. Characters talk in a manner that is designed to dump exposition and details on me, the romance is as forced as suffering on a toilet bowl after a severe bout of constipation, and the plot lands with a clumsy thud.

In other words, this story is in many ways an artificial construct, a cyborg of a tale if you will, that doesn’t feel well cobbled together. It’s a shame, really. There’s some potential for it to be a good space opera, but it just isn’t meant to be.