Mini-Read Review is a feature created here on In Libris Veritas in order to showcase the reviews for short stories and novellas which so often get overlooked.
Source: Purchased
Publisher: –
Series: The Paradisi Chronicles
Edition: eBook, 36 pages
Genre: Science Fiction Novella
Purchase: Amazon*
*I receive a small monetary kickback from Amazon purchases
Rating: 3.5/5
Butler’s Brother, a suspenseful science fiction short story by Ashley Angelly and Louisa Locke, is part of the Paradisi Chronicles and it is about two Ddaeran brothers, separated as boys by a New Eden Founding Family. Reese, the elder, has been searching for his young brother for the past ten years. Now he has found him. But how will he save him?
In the last decades of the twenty-first century, ten families seeking to escape an increasingly devastated Earth focus their power and wealth on constructing spaceships that will allow a select few to leave Earth and colonize the world they call New Eden. Here, on their new home in the Paradisi System, these Founding Families hope to avoid the environmental and political disasters that were destroying Earth. But they find that the world they claim for their own is already inhabited, and the Ddaerans, although human in their appearance, possess abilities that the Founders and their descendants find both intriguing and frightening.
The Butler’s Brother takes place within the same universe as Paradisi Escape, but 200 years after the initial settling of the human’s ships on Ddaeria. It focuses on two long separated brothers Reese and Butler, as they live entirely different lives and find themselves reunited again. While this is an incredibly short short set within this universe, I really enjoyed the peek of what the world is like and what to expect from future stories.
As Paradisi Escape deals with the actual exodus from Earth, this is my first encounter with the alien race Ddaerans and their home-world. Since it’s 200 years after the landing, we get an interesting glimpse at how the humans have fully integrated themselves to the planet. There is civil unrest between the Ddaerans, who are used a cheap labor and exiled to reservations, and the humans live a life of privilege. It certainly made for an excellent backdrop the smaller story taking place within the home that Butler works. I really love stories that focus on the grey areas when it comes to rebellion and who is and isn’t the enemy, because unlike those stories that only focus on just the two sides these stories allow for true human interaction. It is a very short story but we do get a feel for who Reese and Butler are, as well as the individual members of the Kuttner family.
I will definitely say I didn’t expect it to end the way it did, and I’m curious to see if Reese and Butler’s story will continue elsewhere. Overall it’s a nice little taste of the rest of the universe and I’ll definitely be buying more books from the Paradisi Chronicles.
In Libris Veritas 
Wow, that IS incredibly short. Sounds interesting though.