Book Review: The Five Moons of Tiiana: The Chronicles of Rez Cantor

            Pop quiz: who here saw this movie?

If this was a cover contest, I'd give this poster a four out of ten 

            Odds are, none of you did. This movie, despite being actually kind of decent, cost Disney $200,000,000 dollars. That’s a lot of zeros, folks. Personally, I blame marketing. 

           But if you’re a fan of pulp-fiction drama—of aliens and other planets, of empires falling and damsels in distress, of epic heroics and pure evil villains—then you can’t do much better than The Five Moons of Tiiana: The Chronicles of Rez Cantor, by Paul T. Harry. It may not uplift your spirit or provide you with keen insights on the human condition, but the fantastic world-building and thrilling adventure will keep hardcore sci-fi fans reading until the very last page.

Note that this would be a better John Carter poster than the one above, since it actually implies that this is a story about traveling to other planets.

            As The Five Moons of Tiiana begins, we meet our hero, Rez Cantor, bodyguard to the Imperial Princess of the planet Melela. Despite the author giving his age as thirty-six, he reads a lot younger—a brash, impetuous man who never had enough discipline to rise up the ranks of the army. His planet has just been conquered by the evil alien Relcor, and his charge, the young Princess Leanna, is in mortal danger. Rez sets out to smuggle his princess to safety—but his spaceship is attacked, and he and the princess are thrown across space and separated.

            Marooned on the moons of Tiiana, Rez must do his best to stay alive in hopes of finding the princess he swore to protect. In the meantime, he is forced to slave in an underwater silver mine, befriends enormous furry aliens, and saves a city from destruction. When he finally reunites with Leanna, he realizes he’s fallen in love with her . . . and naturally, she’s snatched away again, by a group of evil spider aliens. Rez joins up with a bunch of robots to rescue her this time. However, he soon learns the evil spider aliens have a plan to take over all five moons. To save his adopted homeworld, Rez sets out to unite the people of the five moons for one final epic battle . . .

            For a story almost five hundred pages in length, it flew by pretty quickly. The author’s skilled visual descriptions were a real high point—it was easy for me to visualize the scenes I was reading. From dismal undersea caves to lush jungles to technological wastelands, you really get to know the personality of each moon. I wished I could have gotten to know the personalities of the main characters that well. Rez’s voice is pretty solid and develops fairly well, but romantic foil Leanna’s main traits are loving the hero and needing to be rescued.

            The first half of the story brims with action and adventure as Rez struggles to survive in the strange world where he’s found himself—and that vibe keeps on coming, with new threats and monsters around each corner. The bad guys are completely evil, the good guys are completely good. Even when Rez angrily orders a bunch of nukes to be dropped and ends up causing a tidal wave eliminating a whole city, it turns out the city had been completely evacuated the day before and dropping the nukes turned out to be completely necessary for the greater good. But The Five Moons of Tiiana isn’t great literature—it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s pulp fiction at its pulpiest. It’s worth the ride.

            High Points: World building. The scenery is so vivid, it feels like a movie in your mind. Pacing. The story moves along at a good tempo, lingering just long enough to build suspense while not boring the readers. Use of technology. It’s not every book that can deal with swordfights and nuclear bombs, but both have a role here.

Low Points: Unoriginal trope usage. A lot of the characters in this story don’t seem to develop beyond pre-set roles—the seer, the friendly beast, the damsel in distress. Some slow action. Some action scenes really just felt like a laundry list of martial actions, with little emotional impact.

Did I like this book? Yes. Would I read it again? Yes. Would I recommend it to people who like pulp fiction? Yes. My rating? As pulp sci-fi, I’ll give it four and a half stars out of five. As a novel? Three.

--Liz Ellor, O43

Download The Five Moons of Tiiana by clicking here