Being with Him (The Being Trilogy #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Oct 15, 2010 Wenj rated it liked it

Shelves: read-2010

Review provided by Black Lagoon Reviews:

The synopsis to Being with Him, the first in the Being series by Jessica Inclan, is what initially drew me in. The premise sounded unique with the promise of a science fiction thriller mixed with steamy romance, something that surely couldn't fail to intrigue. How sad I was to find myself disappointed after only the first few chapters of reading this novel.

To begin, the characters are very hard to relate to. They are very monotonous with lots of repetitive Review provided by Black Lagoon Reviews:

The synopsis to Being with Him, the first in the Being series by Jessica Inclan, is what initially drew me in. The premise sounded unique with the promise of a science fiction thriller mixed with steamy romance, something that surely couldn't fail to intrigue. How sad I was to find myself disappointed after only the first few chapters of reading this novel.

To begin, the characters are very hard to relate to. They are very monotonous with lots of repetitive thoughts, mostly about how different they are from the rest of the human race and then after Mila and Garrick finally come together, how they can't stand to be apart. They have no true voices, instead making the point of view shifts more a shift of pronouns than anything else. That's not to say I didn't like the characters, but I just felt so separated from them. They were very one dimensional and it is my opinion that if Inclan spent more time developing the plot of the story (which in truth was potentially wonderful) and not harping on their need to be together this would have been a truly stellar novel and the depth of the characters would have naturally progressed.

In honestly, Inclan is quite talented at building the worlds surrounding the two characters. She has a knack of bringing them to life within the pages; from the San Francisco Bay area to the far away world of Cygiria, these locales seem to materialize before your very eyes. But, it wasn't only the imagery that I loved, but the history of the far away planet of Cygiria as well. She developed an extremely interesting culture and power system, making it seems like a true Utopia. I was saddened to see her very vivid account of the planet's demise due to the invading Neballats who in and of themselves where quite interesting and vile, continuing her theme of mirror images: Utopia vs. Dystopia and good vs. evil. However, like the characters when they actually showed up these Neballats were very flaccid, their true malice and vile civilization made null by the lack of threat they actually presented to the protagonists.

While I did like the aspects of the science fiction elements in the novel, they were more of a secondary nature which I felt was the actual problem. Since all of the suspense and action are related to these elements, I was left slogging through the rest of the book and quite often forcing myself to push on. While the romance was quite sweet and captured my interest due to Inclan's wonderful job at building the chemistry between the two, it was this lack of threat to them that made the pace seem to be so slow overall. With more action I would have cared more for them and what would become of them, but as it was, it felt more about them then anything else.

While this novel is touted as a science fiction romance, but I would warn readers not to expect too much more then simply romance. This is more of an introductory novel into the science fiction genre from devoted romance readers, not particularly geared to hardened fans of alien intrigue.
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