Review: The Burned Bridges Protocol, by Abigail Borders

Good evening, fellow castaways. It's not every day I get to discover a new author for whom I'm excited to see their next work, but here she is, Ms. Abigail Borders.

First off, I do need to let you know I've been acquainted with Abigail for better than a year, and we swap critiques on a pretty regular basis. That said, Abigail Borders' first published work The Burned Bridges Protocol was not one I'd seen other than a cursory glance and beta read of the first chapter. And I'm glad it was that way, so I could appreciate the final product without having already seen any of the previous rewrites or versions.

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 Seven hundred years ago, disaster forced humanity to abandon Earth. Life on the colony ship New Edinburgh is all sixteen-year-old Lilliane, the best programmer in her year at the Institute, has ever known. 

A week ago, Lilliane woke up in a life-pod. Its destination? Earth itself. Because it's time to rebuild. It's up to Lilliane and the four other survivors of the New Edinburgh to reclaim humanity's ancestral home.

Today, the life pod arrived at Lady Diana--the lunar holding station that was once the luxury holiday destination for Earth's super-rich. It's supposed to be a good place. A safe place.

Not anymore.

Today, Lady Di is a battlefield. Because while Lilliane and her friends thought they they were the only humans left, somebody else got to Lady Di first.

And he will stop at nothing to keep Lilliane from ever getting to Earth.

Enjoy it I did. First off, it's an easy read. And by easy, I mean the words flow so easily through my brain that it's not work to read. I finished this in just a few hours. It's a short work, too at just over 200 pages, and the print is a bit larger than many other recent works I've read. It's marketed as a novella, which is  just shy of a full novel-length work.

Which leads into my one minor criticism of the book: It could be longer. One or two scenes, in my opinion, could have been filled out just a fuzzy more. But don't let that stop you from diving in head-first and devouring it.

I promise no plot-spoilers, but it's not easy. I want to tell you all how it starts with a "What the..." and ends with an "Oh, wow," and fills the pages between with more than one "I did NOT see that one coming!"

I can guarantee your mouth will drop open when you get to the reason for the title of the book. It takes a lot to surprise me like that, but she did it. I think what I like the most is Abigail's sense of humor, a twisted, tongue-in-cheek kind of style that reminds me of a fluffy pink bunny riding a werewolf's shoulder and pointing at Elmer Fudd while screaming "There he is: Get him!"

I should have expected this from Abigail, but with an imagination as lively as hers, it's hard to know what to expect at any given time. And in this case, that's a very good thing.

Five thumbs up.