Real science-fiction story. This is what came into my mind reading this novella. I'm tired of novels I read lately, mixing romance, paranormal and SF. His Name In Lights is a refreshingly original sci-fi story, reminding me of Asimov's robot novels. It raises questions I'm not sure ever would be answered, like: what makes us human, our body, our soul, or both together?; what is the relation between creator and creature?
The story has some aspects reflecting to the desire for political power, which is again, an attribution the mankind cannot get rid of.
I was thinking about the phenomenon I see in more and more books: mixing sci-fi with fantasy, paranormal with sci-fi, romance with paranormal, and so on. I member of the Goodreads and The LibraryThing community, and I received several books for free in exchange of reviews. Some of them were good, some others were average. There were some of this "mixed genre" type books, and while I did enjoy reading them, I could not get rid of some strange feeling.
When I considered one aspect of these books, I didn't find it compelling enough. They were not really sci-fi. They were not really paranormal. They were not really romance. Something was missing, those things which make you say "aha!" or "ooh!". You would think that when all of the aspects are put together, they compose a complex and interesting story. Strangely, it didn't work for me as it should have. I think it's because non of the genre lines were exploited in great depth, like you do writing a pure genre book.
Maybe it's just me, remembering the pure sci-fi books of old days. This is why I enjoyed the book His Name in Lights more.
