Paradise 21
How would you feel if a computer picked your "perfect" job and mate? What would you do if your "perfect" choices weren't what you wanted? These are questions that face our heroine, Aries in Paradise 21.Born and raised on the spaceship, New Dawn, Aries is one of the "chosen" lifers who have been selected to repopulate Paradise 21 with perfect human specimens after fleeing from a destroyed Earth. While she was always seen as being compliant, Aries questions the direction her life is taking. She plots her escape after her best friend died in a faulty attempt. But when she finally gets off the New Dawn, it's to crash in Sahara 354, a desert planet with scorching sunlight 24 hours a day. It's there she meets Striker, a human man who was stranded there 5 years prior after his crew mutinied and left him for dead.
Striker combats every prejudice Aries has ever been told about the pirates that took over the last outpost before Earth was destroyed. He's the exact opposite of her computer chosen "mate" but she finds herself wanting to be with him. Even when hiding from lizard men and sandworms, he makes her happy.
Striker wants to find a planet he's named Refuge and colonized it for all of those that were left on the space station. He's also determined to hatch the eggs of the angel like race he found in their deserted space craft on Sahara 354. Striker is very emotional and guards himself from feeling the kind of hurt he did when his girlfriend and fellow crew members stranded him. But there's something about Aries that breaks through his hardened heart and makes him want to try love again.
If you're looking for a hot romance, you won't get it here. Instead we get an interesting sci-fi storyline where a strong willed woman goes against the grain to do what she feels is right for herself rather than walking the path preordained by a computer.
