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Osiris

(The Osiris Project #1)

E.J. Swift (Goodreads Author)

3.47 · Rating details · 453 ratings · 92 reviews

Nobody leaves Osiris. Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and world has lost her...

Rising high above the frigid waters, the ocean city of Osiris has been cut off from the land since the Great Storm fifty years ago. Most believe that Osiris is the last city on Earth, while others cling to the idea that life still survives somewhere beyond the merciless seas. But ...more

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ebook, 400 pages

Published June 5th 2012 by Night Shade Books

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Dec 22, 2012 Carrie rated it did not like it

I can see how people who are fans of certain other writers (Bruce Sterling for sure, Neal Stephenson maybe) would enjoy this book. I can say with certainty that it isn't terrible, it's a quick read, and if you're reading it because you liked something else and wanted another in the same vein, it'd work for you.

It has several problems:

1) main female character has absolutely no goals that don't revolve around the men in her life. I mean, seriously, none. Chasing her missing twin brother, I can see how people who are fans of certain other writers (Bruce Sterling for sure, Neal Stephenson maybe) would enjoy this book. I can say with certainty that it isn't terrible, it's a quick read, and if you're reading it because you liked something else and wanted another in the same vein, it'd work for you.

It has several problems:

1) main female character has absolutely no goals that don't revolve around the men in her life. I mean, seriously, none. Chasing her missing twin brother, rebelling against her father and her brothers, or wanting/pushing away the two men she's having sex with. Aside from maybe one brief conversation in a party scene toward the end, and one quick conversation with a poor teen girl from the West, this book fails the Bechdel test in a big way.

2) The author uses language as a shorthand for the book's time period (the future) but obviously doesn't know much about linguistics. She uses only a few non-English words in a very English-speaking community, and uses them when there are English words that mean the same thing, so She's making a point about the exoticness of the words. Plus she's created tech based on the fact that they live on a floating island, so it's all ocean-based, giving us things like "Reefmail" instead of "email". Yes, really. Also she uses very florid language, but occasionally throws in "fuck" to seem ... relevant? Street? I don't know, and it doesn't fit the prose.

3) There's a very us vs them feel to the book in terms of race, white/upperclass (they're described as pale, and the main female has red hair) while the lowerclass is either Chinese (and some racist comments made along the lines of "how cute it is that the exotic Chinese servants kept their Mandarin", as if the author is unaware that they'd be a lot more likely to have kept Cantonese and that there's actually dozens of other major options instead of Mandarin - unless you're getting your knowledge of future Chinese people from Firefly) or some undescribed "outsider" that's probably Russian/Slavic. Other than the few Chinese - who are literally waiters in a restaurant - it doesn't describe anyone as being a person of color, so basically there's good white and bad "slightly darker than white only because they're Eastern European instead of British/American".

4) You can tell from the first 20 pages what the entire series is about. Who's going to rebel, who's going to fall for who, even the great big lie being told to the people of Osiris. Especially because those particular plot points have been done over and over again.

5) The book is largely told through narration, instead of action or dialogue.

Ignoring all of that, it gets readable about half-way through, once the author has accepted that you get what she's trying to establish and just tells the rest of the story. ...more

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Sep 10, 2014 David rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Futuristic Paris Hiltons, bad boys leading rebellions, aquatic wordsmiths

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, ebook, read-on-phone, female-protagonist, science-fiction, female-author, nautical, eco-fiction, rich-people

I wanted to like this book. It's got an eye-catching cover, and seems like it could have been a cool post-apocalyptic story.

50 pages in, I was almost ready to DNF it (something I very rarely do) but I persisted until the end out of stubbornness, and because I was just barely interested enough to see what happens.

This is a far future in which the last remnants of mankind live in an isolated floating city-state called Osiris. After some unspecified environmental apocalypse, refugees from all over I wanted to like this book. It's got an eye-catching cover, and seems like it could have been a cool post-apocalyptic story.

50 pages in, I was almost ready to DNF it (something I very rarely do) but I persisted until the end out of stubbornness, and because I was just barely interested enough to see what happens.

This is a far future in which the last remnants of mankind live in an isolated floating city-state called Osiris. After some unspecified environmental apocalypse, refugees from all over the world flocked here, and they then barricaded themselves within the city's boundaries and shut off all entrance or egress from the city. Now everyone believes that no one else survives anywhere else on Earth, and they've had no contact with the outside world for generations.

This makes Osiris somewhat like a more traditional "generation ship" story, where inevitably you find out that there is some deep, dark secret behind whoever is running the ship, or where it's going, or other survivors or whatever. Such is hinted at in this book.

E.J. Swift (another of those women writers hiding her gender behind initials, though the writing gave her away pretty quickly) does turn a pretty phrase, and throughout the book, the imagery of Osiris brings it to life, a sea-born city in which the presence of the ocean and their fearful dependence on it is always present.

He has spent hours in this space, high in the eyries of Osiris, where gulls and other birds wheel and screech their hunger. Sometimes he stands and leans over and peers into the depths of the morning mist. Other times he perches on the railings, with death at his side like a neighbour. Occasionally he sleeps. The cold is hostile, and he is not dressed to face it. He wakes in the frost, trembling, surprised still to be here.

In the brittle air he feels, acutely, the internal heat of his body battling with the outside draught. His blood pulses, torrid and bright. His heart tattoos a rhythm in his chest. Icy stone pushes against his bare feet. When the storms come, the elements sweep around him in multilingual conference. Rain lashes the windows and his skin, wind claims the moisture back. He has forgotten that he is afraid of storms. He turns his face to the heavens and closes his eyes.

Unfortunately, the plot itself is predictable and buried beneath excessive prose-smithing and overwrought metaphors. Everything in Osiris is nautical - they read "Reefmail" on "Neptunes" and watch things on the "o'vis" and chat via "o'voys." They eat kelp squares and fish, and even the alcohol is apparently fermented kelp. (Yuck!)

The two POV characters are Adelaide Rechnov, the super-wealthy daughter of one of Osiris's ruling families, and Vikram, a would-be activist living in the city's neglected, oppressed western district, where after the initial wave of refugees arrived, the rest were fenced off and made to eke out a precarious, subsistence living in unheated slums while the Citizens dwell in high-tech towers and throw gala parties. Adelaide is not a very sympathetic character, being motivated partly by spoiled rich-girl rebelliousness against Mommy and Daddy, and partly by a desire to find her psychologically troubled twin brother, who disappears as the book begins. Searching for him brings her into contact with Vikram, and the two of them use each other (in more ways than one) until the inevitable bad end. Rich girl picks up a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, and then violence.

Really, nothing unexpected at all happens. The anticlimactic resolution of the central mystery was telegraphed in the prologue, while the intriguing bits of worldbuilding are left dangling as loose threads to be picked up in future books, which I'm not interested enough to read.

E.J. Swift is a talented writer, but the writing alone could not hold my attention, and in the end it was a chore to finish this. ...more

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Jan 30, 2012 Mike Mullin rated it it was amazing

Here's my blurb:

A novel like the sea surrounding the city of Osiris: full of deep mystery, ineffable beauty, and the siren call of forbidden love. Swift has gifted us with a mesmerizing debut, and I eagerly await her next work. –Mike Mullin, author of Ashfall.

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May 02, 2013 Fred Hughes rated it liked it · review of another edition

This story revolves around two main characters. Adelaide Rechnov is the grand daughter of the man who built Osiris after the water wiped out most of the planets population. He is called the Architect.

The Rechnov’s are one of 3 families who rebuilt and thus control Osiris. Adelaide does not appreciate all the rules and expectations that the Rechnov family requires of all their members, and she is rebelling against that even to the point of adopting the last name Mystik. Here the author has ...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Janet rated it liked it

I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. I thought the world was interesting and exciting, and several times throughout the book I thought, okay, now we're getting somewhere good. The problem was that none of the developments amounted to anything except to go read the second book. I thought the end was convoluted and confusing, and the pacing throughout the book was very odd. It was difficult to keep track of how much time had passed between the chapters, as some chapters it was 10 ...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Brian Henry rated it liked it

Osiris is a confidently written, fast-paced dystopian thriller with an intriguing set of characters and a very well fleshed-out world. The vivid descriptions and action sequences are strengths in this novel and Swift is able to also include some social commentary and political subtext in her depiction of a sleek island city ruled by an elite class of sophisticates who look down on the less privileged dwellers in the outlying districts. Lots of twists and turns. Lovers of the dystopian sub-genre ...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Sarah rated it liked it

Shelves: arc-or-review-copy, read-in-2012

The Osiris Project is promising to be a very interesting series and, while there were issues with a clunky, disjointed pace and lackluster characters, I’m anxiously waiting to see what Swift has coming at us next. Osiris is the start of a fascinating series which proudly showcases the evolution of speculative fiction.

Read my full review here:

http://www.bookwormblues.net/2012/08/...

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Jun 23, 2018 Jimmy rated it really liked it

Osiris is a good book, despite its obvious flaws. I bought this book before I knew it was part of a trilogy. That being said, it didn't feel like the typical setup book, where you must get the second & third volume to actually receive an entire story. It was left with a bittersweet ending, slightly open-ended.
There is character growth, even if damage is the catalyst. The world-building doesn't feel complete, but supports the plot well. The made-up science fiction words, phrases, and ...more

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May 15, 2018 Nora Grace ♌️ rated it it was ok

Shelves: lost-interest, don-t-bother-reading

DNF at page 25

Maybe my attention span is terrible right now but there is absolutely nothing interesting about this book to keep me going. I instantly disliked the main female protagonist "Adelaide," who has no personality. The two points of view (Adelaide and Vikram) are indistinguishable. The world building makes little sense. I feel like I've read this book before. Ok. I didn't read enough of it to say anything more. :/

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Mar 07, 2017 Ashley rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Started out with promise. DNF'd. Turned to literal shit, with the actual interesting parts of the plot being drowned by all the fucking love interests.
Adelaide is not a loveable or even admirable character. She's a very easy character to hate, which is not okay considering you, as the reader, are supposed to root for her.
Vikram's personality fizzled out. From cool Mr Rebel Leader to some distant, bland love interest.
The pacing was beyond slow, like, half the shit that happened and was described ...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Maya Panika rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Occasionally derivative, (shades of China Mieville, I thought, maybe even a little bit of Philip K Dick), but nicely written, with some wonderful world building.
A city of glass, towers above the endless ocean. Some disaster has befallen the Earth and the people of Osiris believe they’re the last humans alive – though it seems that some of the city’s rulers have gone to a lot of trouble to ensure Osirans believe they’re the World's last people, making it virtual heresy to even question the ...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Blodeuedd Finland rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia

Osiris was a dream that turned to dust, but then what kind of dystopic post-apocalyptic book would we have if everything did not go to hell?

In this world storms and well everything really turned the world to a wasteland and Osiris was a refuge for some. The rest of the world is dead..or is it? (no really is it? I wanna know!! I guess I have to wait until book 2 for that). But this Oasis is not a happy place. There are citizens who have it all, and then refuges behind a wall who has nothing and ...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Traci Loudin added it

Shelves: 2014-read, female-authors, own-ebook, apocalyptic

A unique world, where the city itself is a character. Told from two points of view.

While this does work as a standalone, the ending felt curiously unresolved to me, as though the events in the book might be doomed to repeat over and over. Not to mention the fact that
(view spoiler).

As someone who doesn't enjoy reading romance, I appreciated that the relationships were kept tightly controlled as subplots. It's one of the few books I've read brave ...more

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Mar 09, 2012 Ella Drake rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, dystopian, romantic-elements

Vividly portrayed in a stirring dystopian, Osiris is a futuristic island society with sharp divisions of wealth and basic rights. The possibilities of this future world are haunting, and the realistically drawn characters bring it to life...to leave you thinking of them long after you put the book down.

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Jan 30, 2018 Bruce rated it it was ok

Once I realized it was a romance novel masquerading as sci fi, I gave up.

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Jun 17, 2012 Eden marked it as to-read

ZOMG. This one sounds interesting. Plus that cover! Love everything about it--the composition, the light fading through the middle, the vertical landscape, the scale. <3

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May 28, 2016 Kathryn Waldron rated it it was ok

2.5 stars

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Jul 10, 2017 Alan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I like my Kindle, but the sample chapters you can download aren’t enough. I have to give a book 100 pages before I know whether it’s worth persevering with. So after downloading the beginning of Osiris, I found myself enjoying it, but not really getting into it enough to actually shell out some dough and stop being tight.

Fast-forward a couple of years and I see the book in the local Book Cycle, a place where you can donate some money and just walk away with books. 50p later (yeah yeah, I’m I like my Kindle, but the sample chapters you can download aren’t enough. I have to give a book 100 pages before I know whether it’s worth persevering with. So after downloading the beginning of Osiris, I found myself enjoying it, but not really getting into it enough to actually shell out some dough and stop being tight.

Fast-forward a couple of years and I see the book in the local Book Cycle, a place where you can donate some money and just walk away with books. 50p later (yeah yeah, I’m tight) I’m walking away with a book that I half-remember had a decent opening and looking forward to getting stuck into some reading.

Osiris is the last city on Earth, a Utopian experiment battered by extreme weather and climate change so badly that it functions improperly, the East maintaining an acceptable standard of living for its inhabitants and the West containing refugees and the brutalised poor, kept out of the East and at bay by a ring fence and patrolling Home Guard who show no mercy when it comes to keeping the borders tight.

The story revolves around two characters; one a hedonistic celebrity and member of an illustrious family, the other a politicised refugee. Adelaide is the granddaughter of the Architect, founder of the city, searching for her missing twin, whom she believes alive and possibly held by her family as part of an elaborate cover-up. She uses the abilities Vikram gained from his morally-grey past in the West, to assist in her own investigations into her brother’s disappearance. Vikram on the other hand, uses Adelaide and her connections to gain audience with the City Council, on which her family sit, to plead for aid for the West.

The speed at which the character’s lives enmesh is spectacular, each seeing the other’s lives through a new lens whilst being dragged down in each others scheming, almost hating what they are doing but realising they’re too involved to back out.

Swift has a knack of drip-feeding just the right amount of information to enable you to hate some of her characters, by which I mean their motives are obviously driven by things much more complex than you, the reader are privy to. You can hate Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn, but you will never know the full journey of how they came to arrive at their beliefs. Similarly, Swifts characters are more than 2D baddies, and their motives are tantalisingly under the surface, they believe what they are doing is right, but they’re damned if they’re going to justify themselves to the likes of you.
It is remarkably done, and leads to you hating the actions of both Easterners and Westerners as their own concerns impede the actions of both Adelaide and Vikram.

In short, the novel barrelled along, the dialogue and scenes were crisp and the characters multi-layered and involved. I will be purchasing the sequel(s), in full price, and will not be so tight in future.
...more

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Mar 17, 2017 Sandra J rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Twenty attempts to read this.
The story is quite peculiar and dry in some places.
Constantly was interested and bored while reading .

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Jan 19, 2013 Mike Franklin rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

I was half expecting to dislike Osiris, I’m not a great post-apocalyptic fan, I’ve had more disappointments than successes with freebies (I got this as a freebie from Night Shade Books) and this was a debut novel. Not a very auspicious start and for that reason I have been putting reading this off for some time now. However I’ve now read it and… thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is a bit uneven in places, sometimes dives into some pretty severe purple prose (including the opening pages) with some very I was half expecting to dislike Osiris, I’m not a great post-apocalyptic fan, I’ve had more disappointments than successes with freebies (I got this as a freebie from Night Shade Books) and this was a debut novel. Not a very auspicious start and for that reason I have been putting reading this off for some time now. However I’ve now read it and… thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is a bit uneven in places, sometimes dives into some pretty severe purple prose (including the opening pages) with some very weird and unusual descriptive choices and there were a couple of passages where Swift didn’t seem to have quite made up her mind whether she was writing a thriller or a romance and even a mildly erotic one at that. But, thank goodness, she avoided this and has produced a very good post-apocalyptic, dystopian thriller which, despite my fears, never becomes a romance. I do have one other major complaint though:

[rant]
Why oh why do SF authors start inventing ridiculous new words for already established (and comfortably named) bits of technology. Certainly our words for things are going to change over time but most changes are likely to be for new technologies not existing ones and there are very few really new technologies in this book. Some examples:
Scarab – mobile phone (to be fair this and the next may have been brand names)
Neptune – computer
O’vis – something like TV
O’musaique – didn’t quite get what this one was!
O’dio – radio?
O’comm – communication (on the scarab)
Reefmail – email (please!)
Most annoying for me, though, was the time telling; the twenty four hour clock combined with ‘o’clock’, giving things like sixteen o’clock. But even this isn’t done consistently with sixteen hundred [hours] also used.
[/rant]

The basic premise of the book is not a million miles away from Waterworld, in that it is set in a post global warming (I presume) water world Earth. The reader never gets a full explanation for this which I did find a little frustrating especially as some aspects of it didn’t add up fully in my mind, but eventually it becomes clear that my doubts would be addressed, if not in this book then in its sequel (which, incidentally, I will be buying). However the water world setting is where the similarities end. Osiris is a semi submerged city set somewhere in the southern Antarctic seas. Half the residents are the original founders and their descendants living a privileged life of luxury and the other half are segregated refugees starving, freezing and brutalised. Making this a relevant comparison for any current conflict where the haves and have nots are forcibly separated by little more than a wall (one current conflict springs painfully to mind).

There are two protagonists from whose points of view the story is written and they are well drawn giving this a very character driven feel. Most of the future technology is glossed over – this is not hard SF – but it is mostly believable; in fact, considering this is set 350 years in the future, the lack of radically futuristic technology is probably a bit of a flaw; it really felt more like near future and that’s how I tended to think of it. However the technology is not what the story is about; it is about the two main protagonists who are both flawed and come, inevitably, from either side of the social divide. It is no Romeo and Juliet story, however, but is very much about that social divide. After a slightly wobbly start (understandable for a debut) Swift rapidly finds her feet and keeps the action moving along at a good page turning pace. My interest was maintained throughout and, despite the main protagonists being, as I have said, flawed, they are still sympathetic characters that I couldn't help liking. Whilst the ending was possibly a little weak I have endured much worse without too much complaint.

Overall I was very pleasantly surprised by Osiris; it was much much better than I had expected. That expectation was, of course, utterly unjustified and had no foundations other than my own prejudice against unknown authors and a sub-genre that is not my favourite, but it was there nonetheless and it was wrong. I do recommend this book; it is well worth a read.
...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Abhinav rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, nightshade, ghosts, urban-action

You can find the full review at my blog:

http://sonsofcorax.wordpress.com/2012...

Among the bloggers that I follow, there is a general sentiment around that a high percentage of the novels published by Night Shade push genre boundaries and take bold chances that are often trend-setters. Now, most of these bloggers have been avidly reading novels with an eye to being critical for far longer than I have, so they have a much broader scope of experience that dictates this particular opinion. I’ve only You can find the full review at my blog:

http://sonsofcorax.wordpress.com/2012...

Among the bloggers that I follow, there is a general sentiment around that a high percentage of the novels published by Night Shade push genre boundaries and take bold chances that are often trend-setters. Now, most of these bloggers have been avidly reading novels with an eye to being critical for far longer than I have, so they have a much broader scope of experience that dictates this particular opinion. I’ve only been reading as a reviewer for a little over a year, and reading Night Shade Books for about 60% of that time. From my own limited experience (so far), I would have to agree that Night Shade’s novels often do things that you wouldn’t normally find from some of the big publishers. I’ve mentioned two novels up above, two of my favourite Night Shade books. There’s also Kameron Hurley’s God’s War, and Jeff Salyards’ Scourge of the Betrayer, Courtney Schafer’s The Whitefire Crossing, Stina Leicht’s Of Blood And Honey and Katy Stauber’s Spin The Sky. These are all novels that have gone beyond what my expectations, although only one of them disappointed me, God’s War, and I had to stop in the middle. The interconnecting link between all these novels is that they are not just science fiction or fantasy, or whatever genre/sub-genre you want to lump them into. They take some really bold chances, and they present settings that are very different from what you will find in mainstream SFF publishing. E. J. Swift’s Osiris continues that trend.

It is a novel that is not just a post-apocalyptic dystopia. It raises questions about life in a world that has suffered massive global climate changes, and pairs that against an almost commentary on social and political differences in the last remaining (ostensibly) bastion of human civilisation. Adelaide and Vikram could not be any more different from each other than they are, one the daughter of a ruling family of this last remaining human city, and the other a rebel working to improve the life of his fellow poor and disenfranchised. The boundaries that separate them are very reiminiscent of what the boundaries that separated East and West Germany after the Second World War. And that is just one of the imageries that Swift conjures up with her narrative. Osiris is not just a novel about rich versus the poor, it is also about breaking social barriers and being willing to make changes that will resonate down the generations. It presents both sides of the “conflict” very well with characters that are nuanced and compelling. For me, the characters and the setting of the novel were the highlights.

But, the novel also had some glaring pacing issues. The perspective switches between Vikram and Adelaide after often disorienting at first before the chapters pick up, rather quickly at times, and rather slow at others. The first thirty-forty pages of the novel are also a downright slog to get through as there is quite a bit of information provided to the reader, and a prologue that is very disorienting, and which doesn’t actually make much sense until right towards the end of the novel. ...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Katy rated it liked it

Recommends it for: those who like a dark, heavy, character-driven story

Recommended to Katy by: NetGalley/Night Shade Books

Shelves: net-galley, ebook, galley-for-review

Book Info: Genre: Science fiction/dystopian
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: Those who like their stories really dark
Trigger Warnings: execution, keeping “outsiders” in ghetto/thrall, violence, fighting, killing, murder, victimization

My Thoughts: What a very strange world this is. You're just thrown into the water and expected to swim, figure out what the language means, and I was well into the book (almost halfway) before I figured out exactly where this was supposedly taking place. It's a ...more

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Apr 01, 2014 Suz rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A little about the author
she is "inspired by writers who bring the extraordinary to the ordinary" and her "work has always contained elements of the fantastical." another author who "came to writing science fiction almost by accident."

Authors website:
http://ejswift.co.uk/

Plot summery reviewed
Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and the world has lost her.
Adelaide Rechnov wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her A little about the author
she is "inspired by writers who bring the extraordinary to the ordinary" and her "work has always contained elements of the fantastical." another author who "came to writing science fiction almost by accident."

Authors website:
http://ejswift.co.uk/

Plot summery reviewed
Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and the world has lost her.
Adelaide Rechnov wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances.
Vikram Bai lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor decedents of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the brutal winter coming promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years.
Brought together by circumstance and fate, these two very different people attempt to bridge the divide lurking at the heart of Osiris, but who is using whom, and what secrets will they uncover?

Right. Osiris. This book captivated me slowly, it drew me in with odd facts and distant memories. The multiple views. Both The boy who you can assume when reading is integral to Adelaide s path, as well as Virkrem mission. A sad man who is lots more troubled at the start than Adelaide, and Alec end up.
I love the middle to near end of this book where it's all adding up and action is intermixed with emotional impact. I do feel the end was rushed. It ends fittingly upon reflection, but not how you'd expect a tale with so much need for human contact and so many facts about cold, fear and isolation to end. The continuation of the story should shed light on the characters choices.

The idea. A city struggling to continue on after what basically was life after a cataclysmic event in isolation and not doing well. Is not new, but told in a fresh imaginative way. A city over water. Where time has passed and the architects and council regret some key decisions and the people rebel when action has not been taken to rectifying the problems.
Small things like food, shelter are like are simple but good motivating drivers for repressed people, who are essentially unhappy with the lot they have in life.

The book does have some lovely bits. The descriptions of the ocean and towers are very detailed and thought inspiring.
The views between Adelaide and Vikrim over the difference between this backgrounds and the people they know, the places they feel safe, and the ideas they have are well thought out.
My star rating is: Three
Posted 1st April by suzanne gardenier ...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Bree rated it liked it · review of another edition

I would like to thank Night Shade Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book for them.

Adelaide “Mystik” Rechnov is a spoiled brat socialite searching for her missing (and presumed dead) mentally-ill twin brother Axel. Vikram “Bai” is a passionate but impoverished citizen of Western Osiris fighting for the basic human rights of his Western kinsmen. Their paths intersect when Adelaide’s brother Linus suggests to Vikram that his sister might just be bored enough to help him I would like to thank Night Shade Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book for them.

Adelaide “Mystik” Rechnov is a spoiled brat socialite searching for her missing (and presumed dead) mentally-ill twin brother Axel. Vikram “Bai” is a passionate but impoverished citizen of Western Osiris fighting for the basic human rights of his Western kinsmen. Their paths intersect when Adelaide’s brother Linus suggests to Vikram that his sister might just be bored enough to help him win over the City Council - lead by their father. As Adelaide fights to find out what has happened to her twin brother and Vikram fights to keep his people from starving through another winter; tensions (and passions) run hot as they both help and hinder each other in this opening book of the Osiris Project series.

This book was a bit like a pan of brownies that have been left in the oven just a little too long. Crispy and questionable around the edges, but still pretty good once you get into the middle. Character development was excellent and the reader really gets a solid feel for the emotions that Adelaide and Vikram are feeling – Adelaide’s anguish over the loss of her twin and frustration with the clandestine behavior of the rest of her family, Vikram’s tenacity and heartache when he describes the people in the West who needlessly starve or freeze to death on a nightly basis and guilt about becoming a little more “Citizen” that he had intended to, and of course the complex emotions that they feel towards one another.

My only real complaint was that the settings/scenes were not nearly as transparent as the characters were. More than once I found myself reading along swimmingly thinking Adelaide was in a tower or an office, only to read another paragraph and find out that somehow she had moved into a tunnel or onto a street. That split second of confusion and subsequent regrouping of my mental focus really messed with my immersion at times. Osiris is such a different city that anything in our “real world” that leaving nearly everything to context clues really bothered me. Other than that, I found this to be a pretty easy read and decently compelling story that I would recommend to anyone who likes light Sci-Fi with characters who are easy to champion. I definitely plan on reading the next book in the series.
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Jul 02, 2012 Kandise rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia

First things first, this book was WAY longer then it should have been. I mean come on, it seriously took reading 150 pages before anything really happened. Ok, I get it, Osiris sucks. The rich continue to get rich, while the poor eat heaping bowls full of shit and yes, I get it, Adelaide needs her brother like a crackhead needs a hit. I get it.

Another issue I have with this dystopia is the fact that some common names for things are the same while other are different...why change the name of First things first, this book was WAY longer then it should have been. I mean come on, it seriously took reading 150 pages before anything really happened. Ok, I get it, Osiris sucks. The rich continue to get rich, while the poor eat heaping bowls full of shit and yes, I get it, Adelaide needs her brother like a crackhead needs a hit. I get it.

Another issue I have with this dystopia is the fact that some common names for things are the same while other are different...why change the name of banana but keep the name of an orange? Why keep the name of Afrika (yes, its a little different, but you get the point) and India but throw in Zeeland and Pantagonia? WTF? WHY?

I've had it with spoiled protagonists and Adelaide fits the mold, she finds herself believing that she so despises what her family name stands for that she changes her own, but funny enough, couldn't commit to those feelings of abhorrence long enough to get a job and support herself. No, instead she agrees to enough stipulations that keeps mommy and daddy's money flowing in. She's selfish and only thinks about herself and then when her twin brother goes missing she makes enough room in her ego for him. Adelaide's brother Axel has a mental illness (I'm leaning towards Schizophrenia) and disappears, so the main focus of her POV is her brother and nothing else...and I mean it NOTHING ELSE.

And then there is Vikram, one of those aforementioned shit eaters living in the indigent West. He has another focus though and he is determined to get his people in aid and sufficient living conditions so that they can survive harsh winters and food shortages, basically the same M.O. for any book where there is a clearly defined line between the rich and the poor.

And as you may have already predicted, the wealth and the poor meet by some twist of fate and he saves the West while she finds her brother and saves the world and they live happily ever after...or NOT.

Adelaide is such a selfish bitch, she wont let anyone in. I honestly think she is as mental as her brother, as she cant seem to focus on anything else but Axel, Axel, Axel...it was all just too much predictability for me and it took too long for me to get to what I already knew. I was nodding off throughout most of it, the storyline just beat around the bush when it could have just been tackled. ...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Tahlia Newland rated it liked it

Shelves: dystopian

This is a well written book with rich imagery. What I liked most about it was the setting. Imagine a city of glass towers rising from the ocean, linked by high bridges, and with boats plying the waterways at their base.

Synopsis
Rising high above the frigid waters, the ocean city of Osiris has been cut off from the land since the Great Storm 50 years ago. Most believe that Osiris is the last city on Earth. Adelaide is the black-sheep granddaughter of the city’s Architect. A jaded socialite, she This is a well written book with rich imagery. What I liked most about it was the setting. Imagine a city of glass towers rising from the ocean, linked by high bridges, and with boats plying the waterways at their base.

Synopsis
Rising high above the frigid waters, the ocean city of Osiris has been cut off from the land since the Great Storm 50 years ago. Most believe that Osiris is the last city on Earth. Adelaide is the black-sheep granddaughter of the city’s Architect. A jaded socialite, she wants little to do with her powerful relatives — until her troubled twin brother disappears mysteriously. Vikram, a third-generation storm refugee, sees his own people dying of cold and starvation. He hopes to use Adelaide to bring about much-needed reforms — but who is using whom? As another brutal winter brings Osiris closer to riot and revolution, two very different people attempt to bridge the gap dividing the city, only to find a future far more complicated than either of them ever imagined.

Essentially this is a book about political & social corruption, unfair treatment of refugees, and a couple of unlikely allies trying to change things against seemingly impossible odds. The themes and characters are well drawn and the plot interesting, but I found the pacing a little uneven. The beginning moved along well enough, but the following section dragged, then it picked up again towards the end.

It’s basically a good book and I wanted to like it, but I found it too dismal for my taste. Adelaide was shallow and heartless and though I felt for Vikram’s plight, he wasn’t a particularly likeable character either. This is an entirely personal view, of course. Others may relate to him better. I like my books to have hope as well, but this is pretty bleak, and the ending, though a nice switch, left me feeling cold. I don’t require a happy ending, but I like a bit of hope, some inspiration or at least a glimmer of possibility.

I give it 3 stars and I recommend it for people who like beautiful writing, stunning settings, a cruel society and a bleak story.
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May 26, 2014 Willy Eckerslike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

The old have/have-not storyline is well trodden ground in science fiction dating right back to its inception with the Eloi and Morlocks while the injustice of the down-trodden masses and the pampered elite is as old as mankind itself. So, with the challenge of coming up with an original storyline based on such an ancient theme, Miss Swift brings us Osiris.

Osiris is an ocean city built as the last bastion of humanity against the literally rising tides of climate change. As far as the populace are ...more

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Aug 30, 2013 Dan Barr rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

Osiris is, on the surface, a book about the last human outpost of an eco-apocalypse. Thankfully, unlike most other books of the genre which are more interested in preaching than plot, it quickly becomes much much more than that. Osiris takes the best parts of many different types of stories; it's got social upheaval, an odd-couple romance, political intrigue, and a touch of claustrophobia. The book (and apparently, series) takes its name from the ocean-bound city where it is set. Osiris is ...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Dante Iannetta rated it it was amazing

Hm, not what I was expecting at all. But in a good way.

First of all, for a first novel, E.J. is one hell of a good writer. At first, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Some words were used that I have never have heard of before, and a lot of made up words are thrown at you all at once. Eventually you can figure out what the characters are talking about from the context, but this book had a big learning curve for me. But after a few chapters into it, you start to read it at some sort of rhythm ...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Bree rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2012, dystopian

This was quite a long read, I was expecting it to be shorter. It *could* have been shorter. I'm not really sure what to say about this book.

Adelaide was an unlikeable character, as was her whole family. Her brother, Axel, is missing and presumed dead by most people. She's trying to solve the mystery of his disappearance. Her parents are more concerned with public appearance than anything else. One of the two brothers seemed like a decent person (the other was barely mentioned).

I was, however, ...more

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About E.J. Swift

E.J. Swift

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E. J. Swift is the author of The Osiris Project trilogy, a speculative fiction series set in a world radically altered by climate change, comprising Osiris, Cataveiro and Tamaruq. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies from Salt Publishing, NewCon Press and Jurassic London, including The Best British Fantasy (Salt Publishing, 2013 and 2014).

Swift was shortlisted for a 2013 BSFA Award in the ...more