Book Review – After Moses by Michael F. Kane

I absolutely enjoyed this book immensely. I was about halfway through this first book when I ordered all the other books in the series in hardcover. It was a joy and pleasure to read this story. The plot, characters, and setting were so well thought out and unfolding to always keep me interested.

Here’s my early complaint, you get too much story for what little you paid for this. Kane should have gotten at least four books out of this and charged you the same price for all of them. Now, with my tongue-in-cheek complaint out of the way, the adventures of the crew are very episodic in nature and each one matches a familiar pattern of a serial (without the old-time cheese). They are self-contained adventures. Here’s the kicker – you can enjoy them without needing to read eight books with a never-ending sword of Damocles hanging as the “big bad”. That is not to say there isn’t an overarching story in the universe. It is tastefully teased out as narrative interviews at the beginning of the chapter (save one that differs as important to the story) and peppered throughout the adventures of the crew. This is so smart and downright enjoyable. I will say, that it would have been nice to have a little bit more understanding of what Moses did for humanity in terms of care and technology; the subtlety gets a little too much and overshadows some of the payout towards the end of the book (a small gripe).

The characters couldn’t have been written better. The main character, Matthew Cole, is likeable and a mixture of a mysterious past, a hero paragon, and someone who can change when the situation calls for it makes him so well-rounded you almost forget that it’s ok for authors to do this still. The crew collected along the way do not fade into the background. Each one is also written like an actual human being you want to read about. In fact, some of the crew have some of the best lines written about them. Yvonne has an amazing character moment in a library that is subtle but very powerful and advances her character maybe a little bit more than our main character for a good purpose. The children characters, Grace and Davey are just annoying enough to make you believe they are children but they are able to grow and have purpose as the story progresses. Abigail as the Shield Maiden co-bounty hunter also has virtue and poise and agency and growth. I liked that, at least in this book, there is no need to push a romantic angle with Cole. She does not take a backseat only backs up where needed and works well in a team setting.

Again, the plot are the stories and there are stories upon stories here. Each chapter is a self-contained adventure and so you get rise and fall tension and action and periods of rest. However, where a good rollercoaster puts the big drop at the beginning of the ride, the end story has the best rising and falling action. Kane bought a lot favor with his audience with all the other stories and gave them a wallop of one at the end. There is not one “bad one” in this bunch. There are none that don’t have a purpose or fail to logically follow where our characters are as people or from their talents. This is just good sci-fi straight through. Yes, the Firefly comparison is probably appropriate in terms of setting and feel, but this is so different in such a good way (and we get more than one season and a movie here). The ending is nice as a set up for other books in the series but you can easily be done with this one and just know that the world that exists in the book goes on. That’s what I want when it comes to any sci-fi/fantasy book and I’m happy that this story has other parts.

This is a high recommendation for me and I’m going to say that this will be a hard one to beat in 2024 as a book I loved completely. I cannot say enough good things about this and recommend just buying all the books in the series straight out. A true joy.