Wonderful SCI-FI “Outpassage” Is a wonderful Sci-Fi book that will keep you intrigued from the first page to the last. The book is very well written and the author weaves a very clever plot with extremely likable characters and a fascinating imaginary world. The author provides great details that pull the reader right into the pages and keeps them glued to the story until the end.Very exciting read that I would recommend to every person that would love to spend time with a good book and to those who love SCI-FI. Excellent read!!! ( )

Never before did I pay as much attention to the subtle connections between mythology and science fiction—but reading Outpassage has brought the contrasts and similarities between them into full focus. Describing an ancient world, and a future universe, both require a leap of imagination, which the author, Janet Morris, executes with such exquisite flair. In in both cases, she presents characters that embody metaphysical ideas, and fleshes them out in a way that shows their personality on one hand, and suggests a symbolic meaning on the other. Godfrey is the boss, about whom it is said, “God had a wife and children, a mistress, and a company he loved more than any human: InterSpace Tasking.”

Having read her heroic fiction—The Man and his God and The Sacred Band—I fell in love with her painterly, lyrical language. In this book, she and her co-author Chris Morris chose a different style, by design, as the language must match the image of this future universe: technological, mechanical, gritty, and constricting the souls of its characters to the point of being inhuman. ““Cox is a soldier. He’ll obey the orders he gets. And we think he might have more to tell us, when he decompresses fully.”

This description of Dennis Cox, the way he is seen in the corporate eye, contradicts quite profoundly with his internal view of himself. “He stood there for a minute, head down, thinking about pushing himself out the door. But his hand looked too pale and too delicate.” It is that contrast, between his inner fragility and pain and the outer perception of him as a ‘robotic’ soldier, that endears this character to us.

Then there’s Paige. She is smart, knows how to climb her way to success, and yet she is restless and utterly spontaneous. “Dream Date service. Paige had done it, in fact, on a dare. Her hidden, torrid, and fervent devotion to God, whom she could never have. So, she specifies her ideal man as, “handsome, dangerous, sensitive, well travelled, experienced…” which leads to her blind date with someone so different than herself, that the opposites immediately attract: Cox.

I love how Paige changes and comes into her own over the arc of the story. “It was good to be home, she kept telling herself. ‘I died. I’m alive. I’m stronger. I’m in receipt of something I don’t yet understand, that’s all.’” And on the whole, I love the little observations about the political conflicts in this future universe (that might as well exist in our present): “The cover story was something about a violent work stoppage by the Asian contingent of construction workers… The story was thin, but thin didn’t matter unless somebody wanted to punch a hole in it.”

Five stars. ( )