Publishers Weekly review of the novel Master Builders - April 2023

 

The following paid review of the sci-fi novel Master Builders by Wilbur Schmarr will feature in the Publishers Weekly Booklife Supplement dated 15 May 2023.

After an occupational accident causes his untimely death, Chris Petersen awakens in a strange colorless place with a new mechanical body. His new mentor, Brian Philby, greets him and explains that Chris has been watched and recorded throughout his human life and has now been vetted to be amongst the newest members of the “junior builders” of the Sentient Species Test and Evaluation Program. Chris must quickly come to terms with his own death, plus the jolting truth that everything he’s ever been taught about, from the Biblical flood to Heaven and Hell to wars on Earth, has been the manipulation of these beings and their galactic council. Brian explains many realities in one of the novel’s many colloquies before Chris and his new team are put to a daunting task: develop the “Test and Evaluation Master Plan” to seed a planet in about five Earth years.

Master Builders is a thoughtful novel with—as the title suggests—inventive world building and imaginative storytelling that dig deep into myth, science, and the origins of creation, exploring the inner workings of human and alien life. At times awkward at the sentence level, Schmarr’s writing mirrors Chris’s experience, as the hero is told all this rather than show, and readers might feel a sense of informational overload. Through training and dream sequences, Chris is introduced to his new life and "calling" as a member of the SSTEP team.

With his new gifts and "upgrades,” he can communicate telepathically with other members of the team and teleport through the team’s wealth of technology, skills he’ll need when, eventually, he must investigate what the ”dark teams” are seeding in the atmosphere of his former home. The story ends with a teaser for more to come, but readers of secret-history SF will enjoy the unusual characters and continual surprises, from the idea of “Spaceship Earth” as a “closed environment” to the truth about seances.

Takeaway:Inventive SF that reimagines the builders who control heaven, Earth, and myth.

Comparable Titles: Charles Stross, Natasha Pulley.

Production grades

Cover: B

Design and typography: A

Illustrations: N/A

Editing: C

Marketing copy: A