"Tentoria" or the past from future
I begin by confessing I’m a science fiction laywoman. I always gave it a wide berth, being not attracted by inventions, from my viewpoint grotesque, useless, and sometimes terrifying. Neither the space adventures, nor the robots nor the intergalactic battles ever stirred up my curiosity. And I admit I got stuck with this stereotype, supposing that’s all it means. Yes, I know, I wasn’t right. It took a long time before reading a book belonging to this genre where, to top it all, there even weren’t either aliens or other galaxies involved in the plot. And it attracted me.
"Tentoria" is the novel having me changing my mind for understanding that science fiction meant not only a bursting imagination but also the attempt to provide answers to the great questions of mankind, and implicitly of each of us. The parallel worlds brought to life by this genre revealed to myself as theoretically possible and laden with implications. And such a world is depicted in "Tentoria", a gloomy future of Earth, the outcome of the accelerated "evolution" we live through in the present.
The action is fast moving; the characters belong to different time planes and face off each other. As a matter of fact we witness the never ending battle between good and evil but against a new, intricate background challenging logic and stirring up curiosity.
The events unfold over several centuries and, despite not in want of armed conflicts, these do not make up the gist of the book. They are rather means whereby the author, Sorin Banu, making his debut with this novel, illustrates the spiritual dissension mankind finds itself embroiled in on the pinnacle of its development, at least from a technological viewpoint. Its own inventions turn against it while for the people is hard to understand that they must be united to make a stand, being quite unwilling to believe in the possibility of such a future, on condition of "forgetting" most of the present leading mankind to self-destruction.
While reading, someone is many times tempted to set it aside for few minutes to think and understand the narration better. The reading is easy at first sight, but has you pay attention not only to the adventures the characters go through but also to the reasons behind, to their development, and not lastly to the love coming to life regardless the circumstances, no matter how difficult might they be. As a matter of fact, this represents after all the redemption of mankind. Notwithstanding the many contrasts between the leading characters, Cole and Claire, both, love and the shared aspirations, proved indestructible, though that being seen as impossible.
The reading key is found to the end of the book, but I don’t want either to reveal you anything now, as I haven’t done at all in these lines, to let you thus fully relish a fantastic novel, in its own right of figuratively.
And after having wolfed down those over 300 pages of "Tentoria", you want to know what will become of the characters and their struggle, in view of the author promising to come back with a second volume.
(translated text)
